


The Things We Can't Walk Away From

by theZanyArthropleura



Series: A Thousand Closed, Shattered Hearts (A Thousand Open, Active Questlines) [1]
Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, Found Family, Humor, Light Side Revan, Mission-centric, Multi, Nonbinary Revan, Revan who does not murder party members, Sort Of, one very graphic death but in a good way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:28:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26035696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theZanyArthropleura/pseuds/theZanyArthropleura
Summary: “I… had another vision.”Mission braced herself, ready to offer comfort for whatever new, vivid images from Revan’s obscured history had resurfaced – because somehow, a fourteen-year-old delinquent from Taris’ lower levels had become the first person the former Dark Lord of the Sith always wanted to talk to about evil past lives and other complicated morality questions.“Another memory?” she prodded, gently.Revan shook their head, looking away. “No, not… not something from the past. Something that… something thatcouldhave happenednow.”OR: the greatest found family Star Wars never deserved, fixing the galaxy's issues one planet at a time.
Relationships: Juhani/Revan (Star Wars), Mission Vao & Ebon Hawk Crew, Revan & Mission Vao
Series: A Thousand Closed, Shattered Hearts (A Thousand Open, Active Questlines) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1914355
Comments: 7
Kudos: 19





	The Things We Can't Walk Away From

**Author's Note:**

> The obligatory 'played KOTOR again, now I gotta write something'
> 
> Let's see where it goes

The blue-white glow of hyperspace had never been so _frustrating_.

“ _Dammit_ …” Mission Vao murmured quietly, scowling just a few more seconds at the sea of blurring starlines before finally pulling her eyes closed just to get the annoying reminder out of her sight. The blue-skinned Twi’lek almost slammed her fist on the dash console again, but managed to restrain herself. She had at least _three more hours_ of this to go, and nothing was going to help that but waiting it out.

Functionally, the hyperdrive on that Iridorian mercenary’s freighter was just _a little bit faster_ than the one on the _Ebon Hawk_ , if the game of cat-and-mouse played out over the last three weeks was anything to go by. In this case, the two ships had made the jump only seconds apart, but the drift could mean Mission and the rest of the crew might arrive anywhere from minutes to _days_ afterward. By then, it might be too late, and it was all left up to chance now.

Dammit, Revan.

You _promised_.

  


* * *

  


**Three Years Ago – Lehon**

_Home_ , as it turned out, for the Republic, was still a few days out of the realm of present possibility. As much as Admiral Dodonna and Master Vandar had turned the whole thing into a celebration, the victory had cost countless lives and heavy damage to the fleet.

The full weight of that had only really sunken in once night fell on the Rakata homeworld, and Republic landing craft were still occupying every area of open beach in sight. The tropical world that had until very recently been an inescapable ship graveyard was a convenient planet to salvage parts for the necessary repairs, that fact never more apparent than by the looming shadow of the Republic Hammerhead-class cruiser that had already been resting half-submerged in the coastal waters before the fleet had even arrived.

Before now, quiet nights on the _Ebon Hawk_ had actually been more common than you might expect, what with the supposed constant pressure of having to save the whole galaxy and all. Hyperspace travel between planets could take up anywhere from a few hours to several days, and for the majority of the crew on a haphazard cycle, so could the mostly uneventful stays on-world while Revan and a smaller scouting party worked through whatever they actually needed to do to recover the Star Map. And that wasn’t even mentioning the long several months they’d all been parked on Dantooine waiting for the council to finish Revan’s (second round of) Jedi training.

Tonight felt different, though, and not _just_ because of the obvious.

So yeah, Malak had finally just died already, and the Star Forge had been… blown up and dropped into a sun, or something. Admittedly, Mission hadn’t been paying attention to _exactly_ how the fleet managed to get the ancient Rakatan starship factory to destroy itself, but the point was it had _happened_ , and that was the end of it.

The end of it.

That was the part that was keeping Mission awake. For _six months_ , the _Ebon Hawk_ ’s crew had all been held together by this one single goal, and now it wasn’t there anymore. The reality of _that_ had pointedly refused to hit her, right up until the minute Carth fell back in step with the Republic leadership, like nothing had even _happened_. If she was being honest with herself, Mission should have expected that – Carth had bigger responsibilities than hanging around some stolen ship full of nobodies, even if they _were_ the nobodies that had just _saved the kriffing galaxy_.

And as if that wasn’t painful enough, Bastila had fallen right back in with the Jedi! Carth, on a rational level, she could _understand_ – he’d found his long lost son on Korriban and had a relationship to rebuild, so with Dustil now his first priority and the Republic as the second, Mission couldn’t really expect him to have any more room for a third – but after everything that had happened to Bastila since the _Leviathan_ … well, Mission was only really beginning to notice the way the other three Force users on the crew now talked about the Jedi Order, but she was pretty sure they’d all agree that after Bastila’s admitted struggle with emotion and a not-so-minor brush with the dark side, going back under the wing of the council might be the _worst_ thing for her.

If Mission could guess, it was probably that damn _battle meditation_. Even Bastila herself seemed to genuinely believe using the ability in the Republic’s favor was more important than having any say in her own life, and after falling and letting her power slip right into Malak’s hands, she had all the ammunition she needed to convince herself that way of thinking had been right all along. Revan had _tried_ to talk to her, but with Vandar expecting some grand return to the normal way of things, it probably just wasn’t in the cards to tell the little pointy-eared runt to go screw himself like she knew Revan very much wanted to.

But the point was, losing two family members sooner than she’d been prepared for now had Mission thinking, with more and more worry, about everyone _else’s_ responsibilities.

Jolee would _never_ go back to the Order, that was for sure. Out of everyone’s reasons for joining up, the old-timer had just wanted a ride off Kashyyyk, and to bask in the supposed nostalgia of ship living. As long as he didn’t find somewhere else he’d rather settle down, he’d probably want to keep his room on the _Hawk_ indefinitely – well, technically it was the medical bay, but since he actually _did_ perform some healing duties and knew how to make medpacs, no one made an issue of it.

HK and T3 would probably just go anywhere Revan did. The assassin droid was overly protective of and loyal to his ‘master,’ if not really the best conversationalist, and the astromech… well, it was hard to say whether T3 technically belonged to Revan or Canderous, but then again, that probably made little difference.

Canderous was… almost as loyal as HK really, even a bit obsessive about Revan being ‘a worthy enemy’ or something. It was hard to tell what the Mandalorian’s past really was outside the mercenary gig on Taris, but so far, he’d been acting all along like he had nothing better to do. He’d likely stay on, not that he was Mission’s favorite person or anything. She’d actually found his war stories _sort_ of interesting in the beginning, but now looking back and remembering that honestly just made her feel guilty.

Which brought her to Juhani, and… that was where things started to get cloudy. The way the Jedi had treated the Cather hopeful really didn’t sit right, but after everything, Juhani herself still didn’t seem so convinced of any wrongdoing. On the other hand, though… something had clearly changed once the three Force users had returned from the Rakatan temple, enough that Mission could be _almost_ sure Juhani now had at least one pretty good reason to stick around.

The Twi’lek’s smile didn’t last very long, but by the dim light behind her bunk in the darkened quarters, it eased the uncertainty weighting on her just a bit. She’d always wanted to _wretch_ at the thought of Griff and Lena together, and maybe for more than one reason after all, since she had a very, very different reaction to the idea of Revan and Juhani.

There was… _probably_ something to unpack there, but given that Mission had basically had a room on the _Hawk_ all to herself for six months and it still looked almost factory-new, _that_ conversation wasn’t especially likely to happen anytime soon.

But, back to the looming fate of the crew, it was Zaalbar she was _really_ afraid to think about. Big Z had been there since the beginning, the only person Mission had ever needed for a long, long time. But after Kashyyyk, it had turned out he was actually ousted Wookiee _royalty_ , and he’d promised to return someday and lead his clan. And that was _totally_ unfair to spring on someone who’d been away for so long.

Zaalbar had confessed as much since, that he’d thought maybe seeing the Star Map hunt through to the end, and training with Bacca’s ancient ceremonial sword, would help him learn how to be a better leader for his people, but deep down he wondered if maybe he really just didn’t have it in him. Not to mention how torn he already was, between his clan, Mission, and the life-debt to Revan that he couldn’t just abandon no matter _what_ his father and the other Wookiees wanted.

But she knew she couldn’t really be objective here. She didn’t want to _lose_ the big lug, even if his breath smelled. and his fur was all tangled… though, weirdly, he’d actually been getting _better_ about that ever since Mission had finally brought it up.

Mission sighed, realizing she wasn’t going to get anywhere just worrying. It was well into the night, and nothing she’d tried could even get her tired. At least she wasn’t completely alone with the dark and quiet, if the hushed sounds of mechanical tinkering from somewhere on the other end of the ship had anything to say about it.

That was it, then.

With the smile and ease of mind that came with finally just giving up on sleep when it wasn’t worth the effort anymore, Mission sat up in the near-darkness, sliding her feet to the floor and taking a refreshing, unconflicted breath of _awake_ as she made for the room’s exit. She smiled to herself again at the sound of Zaalbar’s snoring echoing through the walls. She knew the Wookiee had set up a hammock nest in one of the long, curving crawlspaces that ran from the sides to the back of the ship, accessed through the netted-off upper storage in the cargo holds, but she’d never actually found out where. Thinking about it, she was also pretty sure there were a few gizka left hanging around in there too. She’d have to listen to see if she could still hear any croaking or soft cooing from the ventilation system once they were off-world for good.

The common area was empty, and Juhani’s and Jolee’s rooms at the front-right and back-left corners had their doors closed. She assumed the port crew quarters were empty like hers now were, since Canderous had offered to take the swoop bike out over the water, supposedly to look for those two Duros survivors who hadn’t had the sense to stay on the ship where it was safe.

Sure enough, the bike was gone, the starboard cargo hold empty except for T3 and HK, both droids inactive and undergoing recharge on the dividing wall shared with the engine room. Usually, one or the other would stay alert for overnight watch, which meant Revan had probably taken the shift instead, as they’d done a few times on nights they couldn’t get to sleep either.

She found Revan in the port-side cargo hold, working with some mechanical parts that were clearly from a disassembled Rakatan droid. It was an odd sight, mostly because they tended to use the workbench in the other hold for stuff like this. Without one here, Revan was seated on the floor near the room’s outer curve, the droid’s spiderlike legs and segments of its cone-shaped capsule body strewn around them along with a mess of wires and several datapads.

Revan had looked up in surprise, going still as if they’d been caught red-handed.

“It’s not what it looks like!” The blue horizontal line of Revan’s interface visor eyed Mission, with slight embarrassment and panicked insistence, yet playfulness in their tentative smirk. “Not up to anything _nefarious_ , I swear! Just a bit of a project I’ve been working in. Nothing _secret_ … well, it _is_ actually sort of a secret, but only because it’s _very dangerous_ … I’m not helping my case, am I?”

Mission made a show of her playful scowl of suspicion, but finally answered Revan’s on-edge smile with a light chuckle, strolling into the room and taking a kneel beside them. Revan’s voice in and of itself was sort of amusing, but definitely endearing, pitched into a neutral, almost droid-like range that might have in some senses been considered grating if it wasn’t also brimming with both lighthearted gentleness and deep, hidden wisdom.

“So really, I figured, well…” Revan kept talking through the awkwardness, allowing the moment to settle. “…on a consciousness level, the two technologies _should_ be similar enough. If I could just get them to work together, bring what’s inside _outside_ …”

“I don’t _actually_ need to know everything you get up to,” Mission assured, then looked about the pile with a slight frown, “not that I’d probably even understand it anyway.”

“It’s just a loose end I’d like to tie up,” Revan summarized with a shrug, then grew quiet and reflective. “I’ve been thinking about a lot of those, really.”

“Well, we have a ship, don’t we?” Mission prodded, worrying both at the change in Revan’s mood and the shaky implications of what the future might hold. “We can just fly off and fix those things, right? Go around the galaxy helping people like we did all along?”

If Mission’s desperation was at all obvious, Revan either hadn’t noticed, or was ignoring it in favor of the solemn sadness that had taken them just then.

“You don’t have to come with me. Any of you.”

Mission felt her heart sink. “Why… why wouldn’t we? We’re… y’know, we’re a _team_. Who cares what Carth and Bastila think, the rest of us will stand by you. I know I will.”

Revan winced in clear pain. “Can you truly be so sure about that?”

Even with their eyes hidden by the visor, Mission _knew_ that look, and let out a long, calming and resigned sigh, pointedly meeting Revan’s offered, nearly _frightened_ gaze.

“…What happened?”

Revan slumped into their shoulders, breathing slowly. “I… had another vision.”

Mission braced herself, ready to offer comfort for whatever new, vivid images from Revan’s obscured history had resurfaced – because somehow, a fourteen-year-old delinquent from Taris’ lower levels had become the first person the former Dark Lord of the Sith always wanted to talk to about evil past lives and other complicated morality questions.

“Another memory?” she prodded, gently.

Revan shook their head, looking away. “No, not… not something from the past. Something that… something that _could_ have happened _now_.”

Mission was surprised, but nodded along. “What did you see?”

Revan was quiet for a long time, refusing to meet Mission’s eyes.

“I could have turned back to the dark side,” they said finally. “I felt it, it was a _choice_. At the temple, Bastila made me an offer, and I could have… maybe not right in that moment, there was nothing she could say to me that I’d listen to, but if things had happened differently along the way…”

Mission wanted to reach out, to assure Revan that they _hadn’t_ , but she stopped herself as much as she could. There was clearly more Revan needed to get through.

“In that version of events…” Revan began slowly, “…I walked back to the _Ebon Hawk_ , and Juhani and Jolee weren’t with me.”

The implication was clear enough, if chilling. They would have stood in Revan’s way.

“…and the rest of you…”

Mission winced. “ _Every_ one?” she asked, trying to shake her disbelief. As much as she might have rushed to deny it immediately, if she was really going to let herself _listen_ to Revan’s words, and the grim scene they were setting, the possibility wasn’t _exactly_ that hard to imagine in the hypothetical.

“Not everyone,” Revan stuttered through grimly. “Canderous and HK… _helped_ me.”

That, too, was a bit of a shock that, if Mission took a second to think about, also really wasn’t. _HK_ , she wouldn’t even doubt, but part of her had still secretly hoped Canderous was a better person than that.

“But the rest…” Revan continued. “Carth… Zaalbar…”

Mission gulped, but closed her eyes to make the thought real, to speak as gently and as unshaken as she could, almost as if she were accepting the inevitability even here and now.

“…Me?”

Revan shook their head slowly, but there was no relief in it. “Not you. Not… _directly_.”

There was confusion for a moment, and then the world cracked apart. The air in the cargo hold was like ice on Mission’s skin, and her lips could barely move.

“Big Z’s life debt.”

Revan nodded.

Mission… breathed a few heavy breaths, as if trying to cool off her thoughts by blowing on them.

The Revan that was here, right now, she was _sure_ wouldn’t do any of that, but by now, she also understood enough about the Force and the dangers of the dark side to know it was a _very big deal_. Revan going bad probably _was_ possible, especially since it had technically already happened once. The way the Jedi talked about it sometimes, it could almost seem like _luck_ that things had turned out the way they had. But _again_ , that was some hypothetical Revan who’d turned out differently.

Not the Revan Mission knew, who, when they found out a lost little girl had been hiding on the _Hawk_ since it left Dantoone, immediately made the whole round-trip to take her home, fighting off random patrols of Sith starfighters _in both directions_.

The Revan who was here right now, broken to guilt and quiet tears, and looking a lot more like they’d seen a ghost than that one time they’d _actually seen a ghost_.

“Okay…” Mission began in earnest, if a bit more shakily than she had in her reactions to the previous revelations on the topic. In fact, whatever her words were going to be took a _bit_ longer to materialize than she’d planned, and after several long seconds of silence that she could _see_ causing pain, she reached out and took a firm hold of Revan’s hand in reassurance. That much didn’t need any words at all, just a firm, reassuring nod across a scowl focused with intent worry.

“It’s not… some _other version_ of me,” Revan insisted, though thankfully sighed in defeat rather than attempting to pull away. “I need you to understand that, Mission. I _am_ Revan, and I… I did so many things that I _still_ don’t understand why, and I… I almost…”

Their free hand reached for the edge of their visor, fingertips tilting at the brim. It was a slow, reluctant, pained motion, and left more than enough time for Mission’s arm to dart across and catch the offending wrist.

“ _No_ ,” the Twi’lek said firmly, staring daggers into still-visor-covered eyes. “You don’t… you _never_ have to do that.”

“It’s… it’s _really_ not that big of a deal…” Revan countered with the confused, startled smile of a moderately amused but faintly appreciative bewilderment.

Mission fell sheepish at the fumbling of her bravado, withdrawing her hand with something between a flush and a wince. “You wouldn’t… have to explain if it was.”

“Not with you,” Revan almost whispered, sadness returning in force, as they detached the visor and looked up with eyes that Mission had only seen twice, maybe three times in passing since the first night on Kashyyyk.

It had all started long before the Leviathan, maybe even all the way back to Taris if Mission really thought about it. Then, it had been an aural amplifier on each temple, and Revan had refitted Davik’s purple battle suit before the body even went cold – or, _incinerated_ , really…

By Kashyyyk it was that interface visor, the shimmering jet black of a Cinnagar war suit, and a pair of red and purple lightsabers that _had_ , admittedly, seemed a weird choice at the time. After Yavin Station, though, the Baragwin Shadow Armor with its black, red, and cobalt color scheme had settled in as the favorite, though Mission was still allowed to borrow it and pair it up with her own matching belt if absolute stealth was required.

She was sure at least a few of the others probably found the whole thing unnerving, but dark side or no dark side, identity was identity, and by now, all Mission really had to say about the look was how _broken_ Revan was – a little less so with every new addition, as they slowly put themself back together piece by piece. It was enough that, somewhere in the back of her mind, Mission had even started wondering what it would take to try to track down the mask.

Assuming the Jedi council didn’t just melt the thing for scrap. She really wouldn’t put it past them.

“I do understand,” Mission assured into elusive, vulnerable eyes, “but you _are_ different now, and before you say it, it’s _not_ about your memories. I mean yeah… I do get a little scared about what you might remember sometimes, but even if you got it all back… you’d still have your memories from _now_ , right? Of all of us, and everything that’s happened since? That was _real_ , Revan, and we all care about you, and you have a home here. Whatever happens, you’re stuck with me. I know you’ll never hurt me, because you had your chance, you made your choice, and _I’m still right here_.”

With that, Mission leant into Revan’s shoulder, pulling them partially into a tight hug but knowingly letting Revan’s arms do most of the holding. There was guilt, but intense relief in the embrace that enveloped her, tinged with something protective, even parental, that Mission would never vocally admit she was actually sort of getting used to. She kept her breathing steady and, without really thinking, just a bit more pronounced than usual. Maybe that would help.

“We’ll leave together,” Mission reaffirmed, nodding fiercely into Revan’s shoulder. “You, me, and anyone that’ll come with us. Just… promise me we’ll stick together. Promise you… won’t leave me.”

“Mission…” Revan spoke uncertainly, prompting the Twi’lek to pull away enough to stare them straight in the eyes. Eventually, Revan relented, sighing with a shaky smile. “I’m not going back to the Republic, and _definitely_ not to the Jedi, but what my future holds… the galaxy will always have more threats, and with all the power I’ve attained… I have a _responsibility_ , Mission. There are going to be things I won’t be able to walk away from.”

“Then we’ll face them together, too,” Mission countered with a firm nod. “All of us, as a crew, like we did with Malak and the Sith. _No_ running off on your own.”

With another sigh, Revan nodded slowly.

“There,” Mission said with a smirk. “A whole galaxy of people to help and planets to explore, and just us, the crew of the _Ebon Hawk_ , out there making things right.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Revan smirked heavily, then wavered. “Just… maybe no more _beaches_ , at least for a while.”

“Shouldn’t be much of a problem,” Mission began with an even deeper smirk, “back out there in the _non_ -secret galaxy, you can have a planet with water, _or_ a planet with sand. _Both_ is just crazy-talk.”

Revan smiled, choking on a faint laugh. “I suppose there’s that.”

“…So, where do we start?” Mission prompted again after taking a moment to relax against the side of the storage crate behind the two of them. “Any loose ends in particular to tie up?”

Revan leant against one of the octagonal prism’s other faces, pondering the air for several moments before their eyes were drawn to one of the loose datapads strewn about their late-night project. They picked it up, turning over the small, square, panel-like device in their hands. “Well… there’s this one here.”

Mission looked at the datapad with interest, even though it looked exactly like any other datapad and would offer no answers by sight alone. “What is it?”

“The missing piece of that estate feud on Dantooine.”

Right. The Sandrals and the… Matales? Mission nodded. “I remember. That actually went… surprisingly well.”

“It _did_ , shockingly.” Revan agreed. “They may have settled their differences, but I never _could_ explain Casus’ disappearance. I only ran across this journal a few months later, when I was back on the planet with Canderous, doing…” Revan paused, with surprising hesitance. “…a _thing_.”

“A _thing_ ,” Mission repeated slowly.

“It was the _only_ thing we did!” Revan said defensively. “After that, it didn’t feel right, so I stopped, I swear!”

Mission eyed Revan very strangely. “You… and _Canderous_ …”

“…assassinated a Gran slaver at the behest of an ancient secret bounty hunter guild called the Genoharadan,” Revan nodded along guiltily.

Mission blinked. “Oh… okay, yeah, that… that seems more likely.”

“I tried everything I could to get him to _confirm_ he was slaver before I killed him,” Revan continued unabated, “but he never technically _said_ it. I just… got a bad feeling, and never bothered with the next group of targets.”

There was a long, unfinished pause.

“Also, I turned in the bounty, and instead of a _boatload_ of credits, all I got was this pistol,” Revan added, holding out a weapon virtually identical to a standard blaster pistol. “Some secret, all-knowing, politics-shaping society _they_ were. You ask me, there’s a _different_ reason no one’s ever heard of them.”

Mission chuckled, taking the pistol to look over and frowning, unimpressed.

“Anyway, I tried to return the journal as soon as I found it, but by then, the estate was locked up tight, and the security droid wouldn’t even let me explain what I’d found. Also, I was only _kind of_ sure I went to the right estate, they look really similar and the sun was in my eyes.”

“Walking around those plains myself I don’t blame you,” Mission assured with annoyed recollection. “Can barely even see the kath hounds coming with all those blinding sunbeams everywhere, how do people _live_ like that?” She shrugged, shaking her head. “So, what’s in the journal anyway?”

Revan smirked deviously. “Funnily enough, Casus was investigating Rakatan ruins.”

“…You’re kidding.”

“It’s true. He actually got surprisingly close to the truth, before the hounds got him. I thought maybe his notes would help me with this project here, but I have all the data I need, so maybe it’s time we put Casus to rest and give the family some closure.”

“Yeah,” Mission nodded in agreement. “And maybe it’s worth seeing if anyone else from the enclave survived the bombing, now that we have the time.”

“I was thinking that too,” Revan said with a solemn nod of their own. “Vandar never actually brought it up, and either way, I’d like to see it for myself.” Revan paused. “Maybe there are a few other places we probably shouldn’t write off so easily, either.”

A tiny spark of hope flittered in Mission’s soul despite the chances.

“It would be extremely difficult, and require significant expense and preparation to even make the attempt,” Revan warned pointedly, “but I think we owe it to all the people who helped us along the way, to go back and at least take another look.”

Over the next several days, the two of them reached out to the crew, finding quiet moments to make their offer. Unsurprisingly, Carth and Bastila were unwilling to shake their responsibilities to the Republic and the Jedi, but neither would they stand in the way of whatever the others decided.

The rest of the crew were unanimously in favor.

They stayed long enough for the Republic fleet to get moving again, and quietly slipped away, taking a different vector into hyperspace and plotting a course for a new life all their own.

  


* * *

  


**Now – Somewhere in Hyperspace**

Sighing, Mission spun the chair away from the transparisteel viewing window, looking instead across the low wall of the divider console. Even sitting down, Zaalbar was tall enough to make the usually-obscuring divider look like nothing, and the Wookiee offered the Twi’lek yet another somber, sympathetic glance.

Bacca’s ceremonial blade was slung neatly across his back, resting in the custom sheath woven into his crimson red suspenders. Mission had once asked about getting a similar back-mount for her own blade, and to pay the price for the momentary lapse in judgement, she’d had to listen as Revan slowly, awkwardly, and _very_ carefully explained to her why that was a _horrible_ idea.

To this day, Mission shuddered even thinking about it. Eventually, though, Revan came across a modification to segment the blade and make it collapsible, and the new, compressed form could clip onto her belt without much trouble.

The slender, midnight blue profile of the handle and blade-backing, bisected by the thin, interrupting crossguard, now rested at her left hip almost like a lightsaber hilt, directly across from the mark-three Zabrak tystel always ready at her right. The olive-plated heavy blaster pistol, combined with her Baragwin stealth field generator, was Mission’s go-to tactic for most situations in the field, but when it came to taking on saber-wielders, even rusty skills with a cortosis-lined blade could buy you more time than any blaster bolt could.

Big Z, on the other hand, had been favoring vibroblades for a while, even before they’d stopped at Kashyyyk. With his strength, it wasn’t much of a surprise, really – in _his_ hands, a metal sword could cut through a person even faster than a saber. Bacca’s blade made him a fiercer fighter than ever, but had always – metaphorically at least – been a double-edged sword. In battle it was weighted perfectly, but outside of it, it had taken a long time for Zaalbar to make peace with the burden it represented, and even now, well… Mission still had her worries.

  


* * *

  


**Two Years, Four Months Ago – Manaan**

The crowd went wild as Revan’s swoop bike skimmed just above the water’s surface, passing under arches and ramping off acceleration pads as it wove between buoys and other floating obstacles in a winding path toward the finish line. The faded orange, closed-canopy, tuning fork of a speeder left a broadening ripple of waves to filter through the outer markers as it crossed the finish line, cooled its immense, cylindrical engines, and slowed to a hovering stop in the afterstretch.

Mission let out an echoing _whoop_ at an avian-call pitch that almost drowned out one of Zaalbar’s lengthy roars. Having risen from his seat, the Wookiee was mimicking shaking an invisible staff overhead, cheering forcefully enough to actually risk spilling from his extra-large bucket of fried protato puffs.

Beating the final stretch time on Manaan had been low on Revan’s list, at least until word finally got around about the Taris race, and the planet that continually carried _very_ contradictory opinions about the _Ebon Hawk_ ’s crew had briefly extended one hand over the other to offer a sort of ‘all-you-can-race’ package; one that included the opportunity to run continuous heats without a limit on prize earnings.

It was really the least the Ahto City Racing Authority could do, to offset the now two-thousand-credit docking fee for each time landing on the planet.

Three hours in, the crowd had waned, and the stadium-seating bleacher section at the edge of one of the city’s inner curves was almost empty save for the two of them. Several hundred meters above the water’s surface, Mission yelled an enthusiastic but still half-hearted ‘Woo-hoo!’ before her briefly-raised fist fell lazily back to cross over her stomach. Zaalbar had managed to hold off for a record hour-and-a-half before needing a snack refill, but Mission was full and tired enough from the first round to recline comfortably into the Wookiee’s soft, fur-covered left side, her legs stretched out horizontally across the rest of the long metal bench.

If she faintly smelled shampoo, she of course, wouldn’t say anything.

Predictably, only several minutes later, Zaalbar was staring forlornly into his empty bucket of protato puffs, a saddened moan escaping his throat.

“Aww, cheer up, Big Z! We can always go get more if you’re _that_ hungry.”

Zaalbar was oddly silent, and Mission rolled over enough to direct curious eyes his way.

_Oh no._

On review, it turned out Zaalbar had been staring forlornly into his still one-third- _full_ bucket of protato puffs, and that couldn’t _possibly_ mean anything good.

Zaalbar looked up after a moment, meeting Mission’s eyes with a sulking, guilty expression to match the Twi’lek’s look of understanding worry.

So this was going to be one of _those_ conversations.

“Hey,” Mission assured, slowly sitting up and hanging a palm over Big Z’s nearer shoulder. “It’s _okay_ to just goof off and have fun every once in a while. You’re not on a timer, this is your life and you can live it at whatever pace you want.”

 _I know, but I have responsibilities, Mission_ , Zaalbar’s low roar answered. _It just doesn’t feel right, and sometimes I can’t help it._

“You said you wanted your freedom. It kinda defeats the point if you’re going to mope whenever you do something you want to, and let all that weight hang over your head all the time.”

_I have to start thinking about the future. Eventually I must return, and lead._

“Yeah, but… time is different for Wookiees, isn’t it? You’ve got a couple hundred years left, what’s a few decades or so? You could just… stick around until the rest of us are all gone! Then your life debt would be up, and you wouldn’t have to choose anymore.”

By the look on Zaalbar’s face, Mission figured out pretty quickly that that probably wasn’t the right thing to say _at all_. The Wookiee had an even more forlorn, distant expression, eyes pulling closed as he turned away in a shuddering wince. With a sigh, Mission settled back against his side, this time draping a reassuring hand over his wrist where it was still holding the bucket.

“…You really think there’s not _one_ other Wookiee on Kashyyyk that would make a good leader?”

Zaalbar seemed confused, but mildly attentive again at the question.

“Yeah, I mean, _obviously_ your father wants you to take over,” Mission began, ordering a few thoughts she’d so far kept to herself. “You’re _his_ son after all, but is that really what _you_ want? You’ve been around the rest of us long enough, you should already know this, but you don’t owe your father any more than I owe Griff, or Jolee and Juhani owe the Jedi. You _have_ a life, and a family, whether you ever go back to Kashyyyk or not.”

Zaalbar let out a sad, scolding warble. _I know you want me to stay, and I want to, but it isn’t right to keep choosing you over the good of my people. My life debt is not an excuse I can hold to forever either, as I know Revan would not invoke it to keep me from my role as chieftain._

“Well, good, cause this shouldn’t be about me, or the life debt,” Mission challenged, rolling over again to meet the solemn eyes waiting for hers. “I’m not asking you to choose me, or to choose Revan. I’m asking you to choose _you_.”

Mission swallowed down the tears behind her eyes, the pain tearing at her heart, as she continued.

“If going back is what you really want… then I won’t stop you, but I need to know you’re not just doing it because you feel like you have to.”

Sensing what Mission had really, really tried to hide, Zaalbar offered a sympathetic, bleak smile and wrapped an arm around her, drawing the Twi’lek into the crook of his arm.

“Please at least… _think_ about it, okay?” Mission said with a new, mischievous smirk, making immediate use of her closer positioning to steal an unattended protato puff and scarf it down before Zaalbar could stop her.

The Wookiee’s suddenly-straightening posture and squeak-like gasp of betrayal sent Mission into a fit of cackling laughter. It only took a short moment of shock for Zaalbar to join in, however, retaliating by throwing another puff into Mission’s now-captive forehead.

“ _Hey!_ ” Mission scowled, wriggling against the arm that now wasn’t letting her escape, several more protato puffs pelting her in the face one after another before falling back into the bucket. She caught the last one in her mouth, which made Zaalbar gasp again, the Wookiee then simply pulling the bucket far out of her reach and letting her squirm until she tiredly relaxed again.

With a few more fading chuckles, Mission settled with closing eyes, snuggling back into her best friend and convenient blanket of fur. Revan’s swoop made another pass far below, the late afternoon sun shone high in the sky, and just for a moment, everything was perfect.

  


* * *

  


**Now – Somewhere in Hyperspace**

Her smile fading as her thoughts returned to the present, Mission sighed a long sigh and stood up from the pilot’s chair.

“Keep an eye on things for me, will you, Big Z? I think I need to take a minute.”

Zaalbar nodded bleakly, but reassuringly, turning back to the monitors as the Twi’lek took her leave. Nothing was going to happen for another few hours anyway.

The long hallway curved very slightly toward port, making space for the room Mission now passed on her left on the way to the main common area. It was always glowing faintly more blue than anywhere else because of the large-size computer screens grouped along the walls and at the two desk stations, and looked like it might have been some sort of navigation room, except everything navigation-wise could be done from the cockpit or from the several other computer terminals throughout the ship.

In fact, in the three and a half years since they’d been in possession of the _Hawk_ , Mission was pretty sure no one had stepped foot in there for more than a few minutes. The equipment all seemed pretty high-tech, easily beyond standard, and Mission briefly wondered whether Davik had ever used the _Hawk_ as some kind of mobile listening post before dropping the thought and moving on.

Her wandering finally brought her to the common area, where T3-M4 was busy working on something with the holo-table, and Juhani and Jolee were meditating together on the floor near the aft-starboard bulkhead. Not wanting to disturb the two former Jedi, Mission knelt down near T3, patting the quadrupedal astromech at the top of his coin-shaped head.

The droid swiveled his neck around, the circular, blue lens embedded in the edge of the disc eyeing the Twi’lek with an expression she could have sworn was some mix of annoyed, confused, and appreciative.

“Still have the trail?” Mission spoke softly, worry in her brow. It was purely down to T3’s seeming ability to do pretty much anything you asked him that the _Hawk_ ’s evasive quarry hadn’t managed to throw off the pursuit.

T3 beeped quietly in affirmative, his head moving through a slightly-stuttered, mechanical nod.

Mission breathed a sigh of relief, but her thoughts kept sinking back to the dark unease that lingered behind the strangeness of the day’s events. “You all charged up? We still don’t know everything we’re going to be up against, after all.”

The droid slid briefly backward on his stubby hind roller-feet and longer front legs, then opened up the paneled compartments on the top and sides of his head to display, respectively, the hidden flamethrower attachment and the repurposed barrels and firing mechanisms of a pair of Mandalorian rippers. Mission couldn’t help but smile at the sight of the small, unassuming droid ‘baring his teeth’ as it were.

  


* * *

  


**Six Hours Ago – Tatooine**

It had thus far been a long, eventful, but ultimately mild day of dismantling the last remaining infrastructure of Motta the Hutt’s slavery and interrogation ring – something that Revan had apparently first suspected when they’d been asked to smuggle in some very dangerous artifact with applications as a torture device. If you asked Mission, the suspicion should have probably started with the fact Motta the Hutt _was a Hutt_.

It wasn’t that she _wanted_ to judge an entire species, but in all the crew’s travels, they still hadn’t met a single one that wasn’t involved in some sort of corruption. In fact, ‘a halfway-decent Hutt’ was still on the list of theoretical people Mission really hoped to someday meet in the galaxy, just to maybe restore a little faith that they weren’t _all_ bad.

But after escorting the freed prisoners on a separate trip, it was left to Revan, Mission, and T3-M4 to raid the last of the weapons caches and empty out was left of the organization’s monetary holdings. With that done, they’d stopped by the main office – the port of Anchorhead long abandoned by Czerka and now in the capable, two-specied hands of one Mic’Tunan’Jus Orgu – and made sure the larger share of the extracted funds went toward the victims’ settlement in the city.

Greeta Holda welcomed the familiar faces with a smile and gladly handled the transfer – the Rodian secretary, having once been happy to play along with Revan’s unauthorized peace negotiations with the Sand People, had had no trouble at all adapting to the more benevolent leadership that had taken the place of his old Czerka bosses. Afterwards, the trio spent a few hours in the hunting lodge playing friendly games of Pazaak with Kudos, then finally departed for the _Hawk_.

They had just entered through the main gate of the docking bay when the sound of active starship engines welled to a sudden roar and the three of them were befallen by a now several-times familiar shadow from above.

A shadow much like that of the _Ebon Hawk_ , though with its aft section bearing a more angled-off, trapezoidal shape, and with two full divots on either side of the cockpit instead of the asymmetrical arrangement on the _Hawk_.

The grey-and-yellow ship took a rounding arc to the left of the docking bay, then began a slow descent, bringing to bear the sideways, sort of bell-shaped sections mounted forward of either wingtip. Four two-barreled turrets, on the inner and outer faces of each plateau-coned wheel, opened fire with eight barrels of heavy laser fire, bombarding the building that formed the left wall of the docking bay until all that remained was a crater large enough for the ship itself to lower into.

Now that the ship, with its raised dorsal structure, high-set cockpit, and sloping, black canopy window, set down amid the wreckage and lowered a small ramp from its rounded undercarriage, Mission could finally remember with certainty that she’d seen one of the same type three years ago, crash-landed on Lehon. The fact that it hadn’t targeted the _Hawk_ , or attempted to fire directly on Mission and the others with its mounted guns, was a signature of the particular pilot, one that had apparently been looking to start trouble with the crew since three years ago on Manaan.

Son of a Krayt.

It was that Iridorian mercenary AGAIN.

The pilot descended the ramp and stepped out through the carnage, his gold and black, diving-suit-like armor glinting in the sun once he emerged from the shade of his ship’s overhang. The strange, almost insectoid shape of his helmet mirrored the cockpit above him, and his hidden gaze locked with Mission and the others while he hefted the thin, dual-ended vibrosword he carried to an anticipatory, warrior-like twirl that was impressive with the thickness of his sleeves.

“I’ve hunted you across star systems,” he began with a cold tone of finality, “challenged you again and again, but now there will _be_ no more interruptions.” He made a thrown-about crossing gesture with his arms, then slung his left, golden gauntlet forward, aligning it with the whole of his black-clad upper arm and the gold band below his shoulder to point fiercely at Revan. “Today, we fight! A battle to the death, and I will _taste_ the reveling, _rejuvenating_ blood of the greatest trial of combat this galaxy has to offer!”

“…I suppose there’s no chance I could talk you into an even _greater_ challenge?” Revan began after a long pause, leaving the mercenary in the awkward position of having to keep his arm supported in the pointing gesture for longer than could possibly be comfortable.

The Iridorian mocked a laugh, subtly lowering the arm and performing another flourish of his blade in distraction. “ _NO_ more talk! The fight begins now!” He nodded with purpose, then started into a run, gripping the double-blade in front of him with both hands.

“A shame, truly,” Revan remarked with a strange sadness as they drew their sabers, two blades of red and purple igniting under the shining heat of twin suns. “Why do they always think these fights will be in any way fair?”

The mercenary lunged out with the rear blade, then the fore, each colliding with one of Revan’s sabers in turn. Mission and T3 backed away, both readying their weapons while Revan defended, two rounding, weapon-twirling wind-ups from either combatant colliding in a fierce, momentarily-held blade lock.

T3 activated his flamethrower, the beam of fire washing over the mercenary’s left flank but merely brightening the thin energy barrier of a personal shield around the Iridorian’s armor. The blast from Mission’s tystel found the same resistance, as the mercenary swung his weapon with enough force to knock away Revan’s blades and leave an opening for a quick forward thrust.

Revan sidestepped the attack and rounded with their left saber held high, dropping the purple beam just behind the double-blade’s forward crossguard and cutting neatly through the non-cortosis-infused hilt. The mercenary drew rapidly back, spinning the sword in his hands until the remaining blade was swung into forward grip, then struck fiercely across both of Revan’s sabers in a move that drew a shower of sparks and left the vibrosword with its edge glowing molten orange.

Mission drew her own vibroblade, snapping it hard to the side to extend the blade itself from the backing, then charged, swinging low toward the mercenary’s knees. Thrusters emerged from the sides of the Iridorian’s golden, backpack-like rear armor, giving him enough of a boost into the air to leap over the strike and spin deftly into a powered, gravity-assisted downward cleave. Mission held her blade aloft and across to block the incoming sword, feeling the strain on her wrists and knees as she was pushed low but maintaining the horizontal grip on her weapon.

Several red blaster shots from T3’s rippers peppered the mercenary’s back until they broke through the shield, detonating the jetpack in a small, fiery explosion that prompted a grunt of suppressed pain and left the Iridorian distracted and burning. A rapid, repeated flurry from both of Revan’s sabers occupied the mercenary’s blade in a series of defensive parries, until a sudden, lightning-infused wave of the Force sent the armored Iridorian off his feet and tumbling into the shadow of his ship. Leaving Mission and T3 behind, Revan ran after their target, sabers deactivating as they slowed to a stop several meters from the smoking, stumbling mercenary rising to a kneel.

“I do sincerely hope that was enough for you to die with honor, or _whatever_ your consolation prize is supposed to be.”

The last cackles of electricity over burnt and sparking armor glowed brightly in the shade, though the Iridorian nonetheless maintained a shaky grip on his weapon, even until the primed thermal detonator rolled to a stop against his knee. The explosion blasted his burning-again body back up the ramp and into the open hold of his ship.

“…Mission, T3, get back to the _Hawk_ ,” Revan said quickly over their shoulder, after letting only a short moment pass. “I’m going to go see if he was carrying anything valuable.”

Rolling her eyes, Mission left Revan to their corpse-looting, and diverted her stride toward the _Ebon Hawk_ ’s ramp, already piecing together what she was going to say to explain the commotion to the crew. It wasn’t like this sort of encounter was rare by any means, but the Iridorian _had_ caused an unusual amount of damage to the surrounding area that was bound to have raised a few concerns.

She’d taken a single step past the threshold of enclosing walls when she heard the revving engine and felt the breeze of a ship’s ascent. Thoughts raced, panic built, but none of it faster than the damning, regretful words that echoed through her comm.

_“I’m sorry, Mission. Stay safe.”_

The Twi’lek whirled around, fire and tears in her eyes as the Iridorian’s ship pulled away into the sky, canopy window moved out of view as the vessel turned around and sped an ascending curve into the desert planet’s atmosphere.

“T3…” Mission half-commanded, half- _begged_ before the pain of a breaking heart could take her.

“Follow. That. Ship.”

  


* * *

  


**Now – Somewhere in Hyperspace**

Thinking about it, if Revan had wanted to make sure the rest of the _Hawk_ ’s crew couldn’t follow, they could have easily just taken T3 with them, so why _hadn’t_ they?

Mission offered an understanding, approving nod at T3’s readiness, then stood again as the droid retracted his weapons and returned to his former task. “Keep on it, T3,” she whispered, knowing the droid’s sensors could hear it. “We can’t lose them now.”

The Twi’lek’s quiet footsteps carried her past the meditating once-Jedi and toward the corridor junction between the common area, the rounding curve toward her own quarters, the exit ramp, and the starboard cargo hold. HK-47 was standing just on the threshold to the ramp, which was… well, technically he could stand anywhere, for any length of time without getting tired, so Mission supposed there was really nothing stopping him from being as ready to jump out and fight as he possibly could be.

Paneled in a rust-colored, but polished burnt orange, the humanoid machine stood more than a head taller than her, turning to glance at her arrival with those small, statically-narrowed orange eye-lenses that should have been intimidating. Placed to either side of his head’s forward plate and the thin, triangular, almost catlike mouth-vent, those eyes held a fierce loyalty, and hopefully at least a few other strong emotions the droid would never voice aloud.

Mission could still dream, right?

  


* * *

  


**Two Years, Eight Months Ago – Taris**

She wasn’t usually one to brag – okay, that was only _sort of_ a lie – but this would have gone a lot faster if she didn’t have to try and reroute power conduits with the stubby, too-wide fingers on the gloves of this kriffing environment suit.

It had been repurposed from one of the diving suits from Manaan, and like absolutely everything else from that planet, it was garishly monochromatic and ludicrously obstructive. Mission had to admit, the over-bulky size was working for her in the sense that there was enough space for her lekku to fit comfortably in the neck. Other than that, though, the bright yellow monstrosity was doing everything it could to frustrate the simple task of properly installing her assigned generator.

She wondered if the other teams were having this kind of trouble with _theirs_.

The crew had needed to split up and install several backups to ensure the power would function indefinitely, because they really didn’t know when _anyone_ would be able to make it this far down again into the forests of precariously-stacked structural debris now taking the place of Taris’ former world-city. Calculating a precise window of structural stability was one thing, but the atmosphere was now filled with toxic dust from the planet-wide surface bombing, necessitating use of the proper protective gear.

Unfortunately, the rakghouls didn’t need to consider any of those problems.

Five of the cloudy-clear-white lizard-zombies leapt over a diagonally-braced support beam, perching atop it with their claws while at least half a dozen more charged in to fill out the space behind. The thick, spine-like hairs on their eyeless heads and hunched backs raised in warning as they howl-roared madly from many-toothed, reptilian mouths.

HK-47’s Baragwin heavy repeater sounded off in rapid, six-round bursts that may as well have been a continuous stream of fire. Rakghouls fell and tumbled to dying halts in the midst of their leaping charges, the entire pack felled in seconds.

The assassin droid always _had_ expressed disappointment that he wasn’t present for this part of the crew’s original founding voyage, and now there was definitely no shortage of the zombie-creatures for him to let loose on.

“Thanks for the assist,” Mission said, with a smile that soon disappeared as she realized how much progress she’d lost by disengaging from the system to watch her back against the rakghouls.

“Acknowledgement: I am always happy to render aid to a member of this crew, particularly when it involves the use of heavy blaster fire on my part.”

“Please, you’d probably just shoot _us_ if someone asked you to.”

She really hadn’t meant to say it. She’d been sighing to herself in frustration over having to redo so much tedious work, and it just slipped out!

“Statement: On the contrary, the master has recently modified my loyalty parameters. In any event where I am ordered to render violence, injury, death, severe emotional trauma, intentional direct or indirect endangerment or sabotage, decapitation, dismemberment, disfigurement, disintegration, disembowelment, defenestration, exsanguination, exploitation of any known tangible or intangible vulnerability, or insincere report of monetary transactions against any member of this crew, I am then to request and accept any supporting or countermanding orders from the other crew members, and act according to a fair tally of the results.”

“Oh… that’s… probably a good idea, yeah,” Mission decided, somewhat surprised in a way that stopped being so surprising the more she thought about it.

“Amendment: I am also to poll the entire organic crew for opinions on my use of the term ‘meatbag,’ and to adjust my behavior toward each of you accordingly. Admission: I have indeed been somewhat neglectful in this task until now. Query: Would you describe any feelings of distress you may experience at my use of the term ‘meatbag’ as _trivial_ , _moderate_ , _severe_ , or _very severe_?”

Mission almost laughed, but took a moment to turn the thought over in her head. “I mean… it’s an anti- _organic_ slur, right? And I know there’s a lot of exceptions to this, but _overall_ …” Her face saddened to hold as much guilt as she could conveniently be comfortable with, and then she felt kind of guilty about _that_ , too. “Organics in the galaxy are in a lot better of a place than droids are. It’s not the same thing as if _I_ used an anti- _droid_ slur. So like… it’s really not a nice thing to say, not at _all_ , but I don’t actually feel like it’s _my_ place to tell you to stop.”

HK seemed right then like he would’ve blinked if he’d had eyelids.

“Statement: this is a most surprising and favorable outcome! Observation: It is quite possible that you are my new favorite meatbag… aside from the master, of course.”

Mission smiled, but the light chuckle building in her throat was quieted by the sound of more howling from dangerously close by.

HK’s blaster started up again, but Mission kept her focus on the generator, working through the strangely math-problem-like installation instructions while the assassin droid took care of the persistently-swarming rakghouls.

The sooner they could get this ‘Promised Land’ back to working order, the sooner they could all get out of here – after a few very overdue conversations, at least. As long as she’d been given this one-in-a-million chance to be back here at all… there were still a few old regrets Mission needed to make peace with.

  


* * *

  


**Now – Somewhere in Hyperspace**

Mission smiled fondly, and started forward to pass the assassin droid without a word, but a shuffle of movement distantly to her right caught her attention. Canderous was in the starboard cargo hold, as usual, and if he’d noticed her, he hadn’t made any acknowledgement.

Out of everyone, Mission might’ve counted on Canderous to take things the most in stride, at least on the surface. His actual expression, framed on chiseled features beneath slightly-greying hair, was unreadably stoic as he organized a long line of stimulant injectors on the surface of the workbench. His muscled build moved with purpose, only slightly hindered by the full suit of blue and white Mandalorian _beskar’gam_ he was already wearing – sans the cowl-like helmet, which rested beside the Echani foil and his own heavy repeater along the wall just to the right of his planned exit path.

For Canderous, stimulants meant expectations of a fierce struggle in combat, and the current planned lineup of at least twenty was, to say the least, concerning. She was pretty sure he’d rarely prepared more than _three_ for any given battle, and most of the time he just relied on his regeneration implants anyway.

But, then again, Canderous was usually the one Revan seemed to consult about anything particularly cryptic or ominous, so the Mandalorian might at least have some general idea of the stakes that Mission still didn’t.

What Mission _did_ know was that the two of them had been up to something secretive for a while, and not in the usual ‘the rest of the crew might disapprove of this thing I’m doing’ sort of way.

  


* * *

  


**One Year, Two Months Ago – Rekkiad**

Someday, Revan was really going to regret teaching her so many Force-resisting stealth techniques, but hopefully today would be another day they just remained none the wiser.

Mission was bored, resignedly awake, and yeah, maybe a bit of a hypocrite, but if you really thought about it, it was _Revan_ ’s fault for taking so many trips back and forth around the galaxy without bothering to let anyone know why. Not to mention the fact Mission’s quarters conveniently happened to be the room on the _Hawk_ placed just around the bend from the exit ramp. How was such a happenstance set-up of perfect eavesdropping positioning _her_ fault?

Her mind kept clear of strong emotion, and, on a more mundane level, her footsteps kept almost perfectly silent, Mission crept around the small elbow-bend of corridor that would give her a front-seat view of the action. She had to stop herself from shivering audibly as the ramp finished lowering and frigid air filtered into the ship. Canderous, on the other hand, seemed entirely unaffected by the temperature, even without his armor, as he waited expressionlessly in the four-way intersection for Revan’s imminent return.

Mission found herself thankful at the sheer number of galactically important artifacts that had passed through the hands of the _Ebon Hawk_ ’s crew at one time or another, because if her surprise at those sorts of things hadn’t already been numbed, her carefully-maintained neutral thought processes would have hit a revealing spike at the sight of Revan casually strolling up the ramp while carrying _Mandalore the Ultimate’s helmet_.

Or really, the helmet of _all_ the Mandalores, as that particular helmet was traditionally passed from leader to leader. At least until, in what might actually be one of the most juvenile acts of spite recorded by recent history, Revan had taken and _hidden_ it specifically so the Mandalorians couldn’t do that anymore.

Fittingly, Revan looked somewhat sheepish for a moment, shrugging lightly as they presented the helmet to a waiting and now slightly uncomfortable-looking Canderous.

“I presume you know what your choices are?” Revan asked, their voice kept to an even, non-snarky tone in a way that it _never_ was.

Canderous nodded, but spent another moment staring down at the helmet in his hands before looking questioningly back to Revan. “Could probably do with some backup, ya know? _Good graces_ is one territory I left to rot in enemy hands a long, long time ago.” He almost chuckled, but rounded back to a sudden correction. “We don’t have to tell them it’s _you_ , obviously.”

There was a small twitch of either fear or sadness at the corner of Revan’s lips, but it flipped to a forced smirk as they pointedly set a hand at their hip. “And what? I show up as the young spring gizka you’ve been travelling with for the past two and a half years? Sorry, but it seems I’m incurably _not in the mood_ to have _that_ conversation.”

Canderous’s fumbling awkwardness at the comment was enough to keep him from calling out the deflection, as Revan probably intended.

“I really think I’d just make everything worse,” Revan assured in a more genuine tone, moving the offending hand up and across to rest on Canderous’s shoulder. “I have faith you can judge the situation on your own. I’ll keep the _Hawk_ right here for as long as you need to figure it all out.”

Canderous was back in less than three hours.

He didn’t have the helmet with him.

  


* * *

  


**Now – Somewhere in Hyperspace**

Mission turned to pace back into the common area, mind drawn to the rumors from the last several months of a new Mandalore making a play to unite the scattered clans. Canderous had carried an expression almost like pride, but more like distant fondness, whenever the crew had learned any new detail about the rebuilding of his old culture.

It made sense – Canderous always expressed a deep disappointment that the Mandalorians had descended to little more than groups of bandits and mercenaries after their defeat at Revan’s hands so long ago – but Mission got the distinct sense there was… something more to it than just that.

Pondering that thought, Mission wasn’t watching her footsteps anymore, and she winced at the new voice that sounded from behind her.

“Do you have any update?”

Mission turned around to find Juhani staring back worriedly, but hopefully, with noticeable tension in her feline-like features. Her cross-legged meditation pose was hindered little by her flexible, reinforced fiber armor, the suit standing out with its bright yellow vestplate layered over medium red – Juhani always did like her contrasting primary colors.

“N-no, sorry,” Mission admitted guiltily. “Just needed a minute to clear my head. Still on course, still an hour or so left ahead of us.”

“Oh,” Juhani acknowledged, quieting in silent apology.

Out of everyone, it was the Cathar that was probably struggling the most right now, and it was clear she was relying on Jolee’s presence in the Force to keep her strong emotions in check. These days, she didn’t do that often, only when giving in to what she was feeling _actually wouldn’t_ help the situation. Even now, Mission could tell the attempt was only working halfway.

“…Maybe you should join us, kid,” Jolee spoke up with one eye opened, a thick, greying brow arching upward into a dark-skinned, bald forehead. “You look a bit like you could use some peace and deep breathing, yourself.”

Distantly, Mission still almost scowled at the comment, before remembering that _everyone_ was on the far, far younger side of Jolee, save Canderous. In hindsight, it was actually sort of impressive that the older former Jedi had managed a classic cross-legged meditation pose. Mission couldn’t remember ever seeing him do that before today, but here he sat, flexibility unaffected either by age or the camouflage-like assembly of multiple dull green tones that made up his Zabrak combat suit.

After a silent, light shrug of giving in, the Twi’lek still grumbled a bit as she took a seat, though it was more a reflection on the situation as a whole than anything to do with Jolee. On the opposite side of Juhani, Mission mirrored the others’ positions, her own jet-black and silver-lined fiber armor allowing her to take the meditation pose comfortably.

Maybe she still didn’t understand _love_ like Juhani and Revan did, but the part of it that meant caring deeply about someone and worrying over them? Right about now, she was definitely feeling that, and it was _overwhelming_.

Sighing, she closed her eyes and did her best to settle her frustration. She wasn’t actually sure if Juhani or Jolee could sense it as… steam coming off her in the Force, or whatever, but on the chance that they could, it would be better for everyone if Mission could find some way to reign in her fear, worry, anger… worried anger?

  


* * *

  


**Two Years, Eleven Months Ago – Dantooine**

“…Could we speak?”

Mission rolled over to find Juhani at the door, the Cathar peering around the corner with a hesitant, apologetic look in her yellow eyes. Juhani had always been especially wary and prone to feel like she was intruding, but Mission had done all she could to convince her it was okay to take the initiative and at least _ask_.

“Sure.” Mission smiled, glad for the company. “What do you need?”

Juhani was still cautious as she traversed the mostly empty starboard-side crew quarters and took a seat at the nearest edge of the middle bunk. Mission sighed internally from her own bunk toward the back of the room and the front of the ship, reluctantly sitting up at the head of the bed so they could talk around the divider.

“We’ve been _over_ this,” she chided lightly, but stern in the back of her mind – she didn’t want to force it, but whoever had made Juhani feel like she had to stay this reserved around Mission was just _asking_ to be stunned, and then shot repeatedly from a distance. “I’m not worri…”

“I know,” Juhani agreed with a light smile, to Mission’s relief. “It is only… _this_ conversation that I think… I would be more comfortable if there could be some… _distance_.”

“Oh,” Mission acknowledged, settling in to focus her full attention. “Okay then, what is it?”

“It is… about Revan, I…” Juhani looked away, eyes staring distantly toward the opposite wall. “I am… somewhat confused at the path they are now taking, and… at times, I find myself wondering, whether the person they are becoming is still the same person I have come to care about.”

She was obviously broken up, and with her earlier declaration, Mission struggled against reaching across the gap. “Okay, but… definitions aside, _do_ you still feel that way?”

“… _Yes_ ,” Juhani insisted, meeting Mission’s eyes after only a short moment of deliberation. “In that, I have never wavered, it is only when…”

“And… I mean…” Mission eagerly started to talk, but paused, wincing awkwardly. “I guess this is weird no matter how I say it, but… they’re _okay_ with the way you feel? With what you want out of it, or you at least have clear boundaries, or…”

“I know Revan values my presence,” Juhani cut in, looking slightly confused. “Whatever their destiny, whatever they must now become, they have always made a place for me.”

“I’m not sure you really need to worry about that,” Mission contemplated carefully. “I mean, I’ve _asked_ , and Revan’s comfortable with the way they are now, and… I mean, that’s not a _guarantee_ they won’t change later, but it technically _never_ is, so as long as the attraction’s still there…”

“… _Oh_. Mission, no, that is not…”

“I know there’s stuff _you’d_ have to consider then, too, ‘cause like… I guess it’s sort of a weird question to have to ask yourself, if you’ve defined yourself one way for so long, but if you’ve never met anyone like Revan before, and you haven’t been able to really think about it…”

“ _Mission_ , I—"

“I know, I know, labels can change over time, but in this case it might not even… oh.” Mission finally paused. “What is it?”

Juhani sighed heavily, but was smiling. “Revan has told me this as well. We are still taking some time, some space, for any further realizations on their part and for me to further reflect on my own feelings. I _have_ never met anyone like Revan, but I _do_ find myself drawn to them as I always was.” Her face fell slightly. “I still… _worry_ about that. I do not want to love any part of them that they do not wish me to, but as you say, they have told me that they feel no distress currently, that their form is precisely what they wish it to be.”

Mission let herself relax, breathing through an impressed, slightly proud smile. “That’s actually pretty lucky then.”

“Luck, or somewhere in the galaxy there is a very talented and well-paid medical droid,” Juhani countered. “Revan’s words,” she added, with a smirk, at Mission’s balking.

Mission rolled her eyes and laughed internally, and it was only when the moment had passed that she turned back to Juhani with some hesitance.

“…That wouldn’t bother you?”

Juhani smiled warmly. “No,” she said simply, shaking her head. “And also… that is _not_ what I wanted to speak to you about.”

Mission settled under a relieved smile of her own, then made a conscious effort to resume a state of attentiveness as it became clear Juhani was working to her actual point.

“What worries me is…” Juhani’s face fell as she pondered. “It is… _strange_ , what Revan’s relationship with the Force has become since their retraining as a Jedi. I do not sense the sort of darkness in them that is overwhelming, or reaching for control, but the darkness is there, perhaps more obvious in Revan’s actions and choices than in what can be read of their being.”

“Ohhh,” Mission nodded along slowly. “You’re worried about the path Revan’s taking… _in the Force_.”

“Yes,” Juhani nodded as well. “I can also see that they are… more cautious around me. More prone to adhere to the lighter path when I am present, then they are with you and the others. I… suppose that is something I should be appreciative of, as I know it is because they are sensitive of my fears, but knowing that they hide a part of their true nature makes it… complicated.”

Mission was only a little bit unsettled, knowing that as scary as some of that sounded, she could probably trust Revan to understand the Force a lot better than she could.

But Juhani was scared, and asking for her advice, so Mission would have to try her best here.

“I think… I mean, I _know_ Revan worries about the same things, but I don’t know if I would call it _hiding_. It just sounds like another thing they consider when making choices, like how what they do is going to affect everyone around them, including the crew. I mean, maybe their methods can get a bit extreme, and if you count abusing the Force to be a bad thing, then well… _yeah_ , but… I know a real bully when I see one, or someone who doesn’t care about who they hurt, and Revan is the _opposite_ of that. Everything they do is _because_ they care, because they want to help people and stop bad things from happening.”

“This I know,” Juhani insisted with the edge of an admiring smile. “That is… the confusing part. How can such light be the product of actions tainted with darkness?”

“Maybe good isn’t always light?” Mission posed in half-formed thought. “I mean, peaceful solutions are great and all, but… there’s some _real evil people_ out there in the galaxy, and letting that stand because there’s a line you can’t cross doesn’t sound real _good_ to me. Maybe sometimes you just gotta electrocute a bunch of slavers to death, y’know?”

“She’s right,” a third voice echoed from the corridor outside, catching the middle of Juhani’s uneasy wince. Both she and Mission turned instead with startled expressions, that soon approached sighs as one casually-approaching Jolee Bindo made himself known with an unapologetic smile.

“It’s rude to eavesdrop, you know!” Mission halfheartedly scolded, before Juhani could let loose something that would probably be at least a bit more damning.

“Please,” Jolee countered with a stern, only-quarter-joking authoritative tone. “At my age, as long as my hearing works _at all_ , I’ve got a right to make the most of whatever I can get. It’s a small ship and I was just passing this way, not _my_ fault neither of _you_ noticed I was getting close.”

“Sure,” Mission quipped with an eye-roll, “you were just going about your business elsewhere, by walking down this dead-end hallway, and…” Mission squinted at the balding, dark-skinned Human’s form in the low light. “…is that the sound-dampening stealth unit from that tomb on Korriban?”

“Huh?” Jolee questioned with mock-confusion, patting a few fingers over the smooth, metallic band of the high-tech belt he was wearing and shrugging ambiguously. “…So it is.”

Clearly not open to opposition, Jolee crossed the length of the room and took a seat at the edge of a storage container, roughly across from the divider between the two occupied beds. He locked eyes with Juhani, purpose and a bit of a smile in his softly-spoken words.

“Do you remember what you said the very first time you saw me, and sensed me in the Force?”

Juhani pondered the question for a moment. “I said… that you served the light. That despite your own words and implications to the contrary, there was no taint of the dark side within you.”

“Oh, I haven’t gone anywhere _near_ the dark side’s taint,” Jolee subtly re-emphasized with the hint of a smirk. “I’m just not so _light_ as the Jedi would’ve preferred me, but _bah_ , who cares what _those_ firaxan fossils have to say? Point is, there’s more to the Force than ‘ _either-or_ ,’ and Revan knows it just as well as I do.”

“I… am not sure I understand,” Juhani asked with narrowed, skeptical eyes. “How can one stray toward a darker path, make use of the dark side of the Force, without becoming dark?”

“Note one important distinction,” Jolee replied, “I _serve_ the light, not _embody_ it. Now, it’s true, you can be pulled away from true alignment with the light, even by acting in its best interest, but it takes a hell of a lot more than just _that_ to go the full flip to the dark. There’s a nice, long, comfortable space in between where you don’t have to follow the council’s ridiculous, self-destructive standards _or_ be a power-hungry, reckless and petty narcissist kicking tookas for the hell of it.”

“But… the abilities granted by the Force still bear their own allegiance, do they not?” Juhani countered, though it was posed as a genuine question. “Force _lightning_ does not exist in an area of grey as you suppose, it is a power of the dark side, just as Force healing and Force aura are powers of the light. At least, that is what we are taught.”

Jolee seemed ready to sigh at the question. “They have _preferences_ , maybe, but in the end, abilities are just that: abilities. Just because Force healing comes _easier_ to those closer to the light, doesn’t mean a power-mad and fatally-wounded tyrant can’t use that power to extend his own life and prolong his reign of terror. And just because Force _insanity_ is easier to call on from a stance of darkness, doesn’t mean I haven’t used it a few times to scramble the thoughts of those otherwise imminently bent on causing mass bloodshed. In what they embody at their core, Force powers inherently appeal to certain parts of our nature, and perhaps those with weaker fortitude could be swayed toward a particular side by their use, but there’s nothing actually stopping someone from mastering everything _either_ side of the Force has to offer and still using it all for one’s _own_ ends, whatever they may be.”

“I see,” Juhani nodded, offering a thoughtful slant of her lips but no objection. “And Revan… masters the dark, but serves the light, as you do?”

“Well…” Jolee backtracked, “…more or less.”

Juhani squinted, her narrowed eyes slowly joining a forming, uncertain scowl. “What is your meaning, by this?”

“I’ll admit, that’s where Revan and I seem to differ,” Jolee began again, taking on a different, amusedly recollecting tone. “I say I serve the light mostly because, well, _you_ said it first. Still, I think it applies, because I _do_ prefer to act in the interest of the most good, both practically and ideologically. It’s a less _obscured_ version than the one the Jedi use, of course – the Jedi are taught to value ‘life’ as an abstract concept, but to avoid attachment to individual lives, which is just _asking_ for a few of them to start thinking about _acceptable losses_ in a way no peacekeeper ever should – but ultimately I do ascribe to a more objective way of thinking, and a morality that goes above the notion of always taking the path of least resistance. Sometimes I still believe in being _better_ than our enemies, in ways more meaningful than just beating them in a fight.”

“And Revan?” Mission interjected, feeling just a bit like her head was starting to hurt from listening to the old-timer drone on.

“I’m _getting_ to that!” Jolee balked, his thick, grey eyebrows furrowing. “Anyway, from my own observations so far, I‘ve gleaned that Revan once followed that more _extreme_ version of the ‘greater good’ mentality – in the Mandalorian wars, at the very least, though I’d even suspect some of it may have survived or indeed _thrived_ in their time as a Sith. Now, though… things are different, and I’d chalk it up less to any rewritten personality and more to a plain old shift in perspective. No, Revan _these_ days doesn’t serve any written or established moral standard, nor any code of honor or personal creed. In fact, I’d say they reject the idea of serving anything at all, and if they do operate on any set of values… it’s the exact _opposite_ of the Jedi way.”

“Kriff, just spit it out already!” Mission complained once more, thought it was mostly prompted by noting Juhani’s sudden unease at the last idea.

“Revan _does_ value lives,” Jolee concluded, now smiling indulgently through the tale’s end despite the rudeness of the interjection. “Whatever the Jedi have ever said about attachment, Revan rejects it in full, and allows themself to be guided by emotional connection to others – something that extends even to every last stranger in need they’ve helped along the way, but is particularly potent surrounding, well, the members of this crew.”

Jolee’s eyes settled, with purpose, on Juhani, then shifted to silently address Mission as well.

“All of us, but I dare say the two of _you_ in particular, are the key to Revan’s beliefs and actions in a way you might not entirely realize. As much as they might seem to operate on a rational, analytical level somewhere above the rest of us, Revan is still learning, still finding their place in the galaxy, and knowing that damn near everyone they’ve ever had faith in turned out to be using and manipulating them, they’ve placed their trust in something they can be sure of, because it matters _more_ to them than the truth does. Far more than light or dark, than peace or passion, than honesty or deception, Revan’s allegiance is to the people they care about. Those they’ve chosen as a sort of… _living_ moral center, pieced together from all walks of life and collectively, trusted above all else. _That_ is where Revan exists, in the Force, and in a greater a galaxy that can be cruel, murky, and above all, _complicated_.”

  


* * *

  


**Now – Somewhere in Hyperspace**

Mission still remembered both the tearful welling of emotion, and the strange weight of responsibility that had taken hold of her in that moment – at least until she realized that _trying_ to set any kind of righteous example defeated the whole point. She would still admit to being skeptical of any moral circle that included _HK-47_ , but in practice, everything seemed to balance out.

“I think… I think I get it now,” she admitted with a reluctant sigh. “I can… try to pretend like there’s a rule that covers everything, that nothing could make what Revan did right, but… this time is _different_ , isn’t it?”

Juhani was silent for a moment, then nodded softly. “As of late, Revan has been plagued by… _darker_ visions. Darker still, than even their own memories as a Sith. I had not known what they had planned, nor that it was to happen now, only that… that the lives we had built could not last forever. Not while this threat still loomed like a shadow over an entirely unsuspecting galaxy.”

Juhani’s face contorted, drawing on an urge to bare her teeth.

“An _evil_ lies in wait, like nothing even the Jedi could have imagined. A powerful, dark presence that cannot be allowed to persist. That must be stopped at any cost, and… and I… I do not think even Revan believes it is a fight they can win.”

Mission set an arm over a quivering shoulder, her free hand finding one of Juhani’s and squeezing tightly. She made her presence firm and assuring, even as she gulped down the sadness of processing that thought for herself. It was only a few short moments of that before Juhani reached out to pull Mission fully into an openly-weeping hug, and they both lost any illusion of composure.

“Revan… can’t risk putting _us_ in that kind of danger,” said Mission, between settling breaths. “So, I… I guess I can’t really be angry, but they _also_ don’t get to make calls like that. As much as they want to protect us, it’s _our_ job to protect _them_ too, even if it means… even if it means dying with them, because at least we’ll have _tried_.”

“…Thank you,” Juhani whispered after a deep exhale. “I do not think there was ever any doubt this was what you would decide, as much as a part of it also pains me.” She pulled away so her yellow, catlike, kind eyes could stare fondly into Mission’s. “You… have become so much more to both of us, something unexpected, and…”

“I know,” Mission acknowledged, returning a bleak smile and a soft nod.

Just for a moment, she allowed herself to be cradled, and pulled desperately against Juhani’s shoulder, tightly-wrapping arms attempting to shield her just one moment longer against the oncoming storm that awaited them all.

“…Okay, that’s enough,” the Twi’lek pleaded quickly, facing slight but parting resistance as she worked to free herself.

“We are so very proud of you.”

“Yup, I get it,” Mission nodded again, holding her voice and smirk awkwardly flat and trying not to scowl at the slight gleam of playful mischief that had somehow found itself in Juhani’s eyes.

The stalemate was broken by a series of chirps from across the floor, as T3 pulled away from the holo-table and approached with a tilted head and a short string of audible droidspeak.

“Guess the waiting game’s up,” Jolee remarked impassively, stretching his legs and back as he stood from the floor. “Time to see what all the fuss is about.”

Mission gave the older Jedi a readied smirk, that only moderately faded with time. “Let’s just hope we’re not too late.”

  


* * *

  


**Now – Dromund Kaas**

Gleaming, fluorescent white light shone from below Revan’s feet as they darted upward along the slanted surface, the several-meter-wide and several-stories-long shard of metal thrown downward like a spear whose point Revan had only narrowly dodged.

No longer aligned parallel and hovering relatively in place, like a set of gigantic wind chimes, the Spires of Victory now spun, twisted, and tumbled end-over-end in a rather egocentric display of Sith Emperor Vitiate’s command of the Force. Revan leapt over a spire that had approached like a rolling log, feet kicking off another near-vertical spinner to the right and yet another to the left in a zig-zagging, upward charge aimed directly toward Vitiate.

Another spire sliced downward and diagonally like the chop of a sword, and Revan sprung away from their targeted footing on the left, the two pillars colliding with a loud, metallic, chime-like clang in the constant hiss of the pouring rain. Backflipping through the air, Revan secured a temporary hold against a near-vertical spire farther out to the right. In the haze of the city’s perpetual overcast darkness, Revan sent their red-bladed saber spinning quickly away like a boomerang, using their free right hand to instead draw a pair of small, but precariously-held, fist-sized metallic spheres. Leaping onward to finish the third iteration of this particular, tedious climb over the moving, narrow platforms, they swung mightily, wildly overhead with a single blade.

The violet saber clashed with Vitiate’s red, sparks flying as the two crossed paths and landed at opposite ends of a horizontal, laterally-rotating spire beneath them. The two combatants rounded one another without taking a single step, as a perimeter of vertical, drill-spinning spires closed in like a fence around them.

“You are strong, Revan, but not as strong as you once were,” Vitiate spoke calmly, with a practiced air of unconcerned disinterest. “You were either very bold, or very foolish, to return here alone.”

“At this point, I can’t always _tell_ whether I’m remembering things from my past, or from my future,” Revan challenged with a taunt-filled grin, “but… something’s telling me that for once, I’ve made the _right_ choice.”

Reaching back, and casting forward with the Force, Vitiate gathered more of the vertical spires behind him and launched them forward in an alternating pattern to either side, each pillar spinning vertically past the Emperor before turning diagonal and passing over the length of the horizontal spire toward where Revan stood. Straining against Vitiate’s power, Revan used the Force to knock each of the drilling, crisscrossing beams aside just before impact, gaining ground each time until they finally had enough of a lead on Vitiate’s attack to throw a primed thermal detonator through the narrow opening. Vitiate soundly countered the attempt with a condescending grin, catching the grenade with the Force and allowing it to explode harmlessly between the two of them.

The second grenade impacted the floor at Vitiate’s feet, erupting into a white-blue, glowing, pulsating mound of adhesive that ensnared the Emperor up to the ankles.

Vitiate regarded the occurrence with near-unconcerned amusement, at least until the moment he noticed Revan’s mischievous grin and his stunned eyes shot open.

Twisting in place as much as his trapped feet would allow him, Vitiate rounded toward the next vertical, drill-spinning spire in sequence, now pulled along by Revan as much as his own lingering command of the object. Circling just into view at the last moment was Revan’s red-bladed saber, the very tip impaled in the metal of the spire and the still-exposed length of the blade rapidly swinging toward Vitiate at neck-height.

Vitiate brought up his own blade just in time, sparks flying and muscles pulling as the Sith Emperor’s already-painful defensive posture was bent backward under the strain of the object-bound horizontal saber colliding with the wrist-supported vertical one.

In the meantime, Revan had flipped overhead, landing after their red saber’s swinging arc and slicing across and upward with their purple one. Vitiate’s saber-resistant armor sparked with defensive electricity as he finally twisted out of the weakening adhesive and rolled unceremoniously across the horizontal spire’s makeshift floor.

“ _Hhh_ -hmm,” Vitiate grumbled, a certain disaffected annoyance in his intonation as he rose artfully to his feet. “You are a clever one, with many _tricks_ , indeed. But if you were truly powerful enough to pose a threat to me, I would never have involved you in my plans to begin with.” On a ghastly, grey-pale face, a single eyebrow arched piercingly toward Revan. “You think _I_ would be such a fool, to take that risk?”

“I think you’re proud, and arrogant enough to assure yourself you haven’t,” Revan posed absently, a now-deactivated saber hilt returning to their free hand only to be ignited once more and spun vertically in tandem with the other. “And whatever purpose I was to serve in your _plan_ … I’ll admit, I’m curious, but it’s an answer I can live _without_.”

Revan’s sabers halted into their wielder’s battle stance, held skyward and tilted warningly toward Vitiate, raindrops setting off miniscule geysers of steam along the length of each blade.

“Oh, if only you _knew_ …” Vitiate’s haunting smile grew in a way that proved the man’s stone-grey skin retained more flexibility than Revan had initially assumed. “Killing me once, or even a _thousand_ times over and over again, would scarce be enough to sate you.”

Revan was pulled back to a half-shaded, unmonitored docking hangar on Manaan, the dropping bodies of two Selkath hired guns, and a far-too-quick and unsavored strike of a blade that they still wouldn’t have dared delay any longer.

“Funnily enough, if I _actually_ had the chance to do that to someone…” Revan shrugged, a tilted visor returning the Emperor’s front of indifference with something far closer to the genuine article.

“…it _wouldn’t be you_.”

The twist of a knowing smirk on a falling face wasn’t enough to hide Vitiate’s disappointment. “You would change your mind soon enough… were you to _survive_.”

Cackling purple-blue, the continuous bolt of lightning struck against quickly-crossing sabers, and Revan felt the strength of the attack even through their steadily-held defense. The spire below them spun, the vertical cage returned, and as the opponents circled, wisps of Vitiate’s lightning branched off from the central assault, sounding the Spires’ chimes as they chained across the metal columns in sequence. One by one, the traveling charges to the right and left circled behind Revan, striking them painfully in the back.

With draining strength, Revan began allowing one saber to bear the direct attack as long as the guard could be maintained, using the bought time to swing the other behind them and counter the secondary bolt before switching the blade’s tasks and readying for the next from the other side. They could _feel_ the pain screaming from the hilts themselves, each time being brought to the verge of succumbing to Vitiate’s particularly ingenious and lethal twist on the Force.

In the revolving view of the city beyond, Revan watched the tops of buildings whirl past, and the distant mountains mirror the motion from afar. They saw the Sith Empire’s sigil glyph lit up in red, the flashes of lightning on the horizon, and new lights, like a cleansing fire raining down on a world of darkness.

… _That_ wasn’t right.

With only seconds to react, Revan shifted their guard, gathered the Force, and leapt skyward.

  


* * *

  


The _Ebon Hawk_ broke the planet’s atmosphere, accompanied by the flaming meteor shower of several dozen recently-exploded Sith starfighters. The fiery wrecks crash-landed in the jungle, dropping to either side of the freighter as it continued its advance through rain, lightning, and the gleaming light of twin moons.

Trees and mountains gave way to the dark, silhouetted buildings of an immense city still under construction, lights of neon red punctuating the already eerie atmosphere. There had been no sign of the other ship, and by now, Revan could have been anywhere.

But if Mission had a best guess, it would probably be the floaty, electrified tornado of shimmering, long metal shards currently circling in the sky above.

Faintly in the chaos, she could see two humanoid silhouettes, and only one of them was Revan.

Mission gunned it.

With a cacophonous, high-pitched clatter likely heard throughout the whole of the immense settlement below, the chiming beams of metal clashed and tumbled like shards of shattering glass as the _Ebon Hawk_ plowed through, emerging from the other side with several shallow dents in the hull, a few light electrical burns, and one dark-robed, evil-looking speed bump splayed out across the front window.

“Revan, you catch a ride?” Mission called out over the comm line.

 _“I’m on top of the ship,”_ Revan answered, incredulously. _“Why am I on top of a ship that shouldn’t be here?”_

“We’re with you to the end, and that’s _our_ choice, not yours! Now who’s this incredibly powerful, evil entity I just ran over?”

Mission studied the man’s features – his bald head and stone-like, pallid skin, the layered armor panels that jutted off his shoulders, the dark, thick robes that continued far enough down to obscure his feet, and his not-particularly-glowy but still unnaturally bright red eyes. Those eyes met Mission’s with something like mild surprise and waning patience.

 _“That’s Vitiate, immortal Emperor of the Sith!”_ Revan cut in again. _“Bring us back around to his palace, I have a plan.”_

“…Which one’s the palace?”

_“He’s a Sith! It’s the big, unsettling one that looks like someone tried to fill the void in their empty soul with material possessions.”_

  


* * *

  


Revan shifted for balance as the _Ebon Hawk_ rounded a curve back through Kaas City, Vitiate’s palace soon taking its place directly ahead. Thoughts still racing and worry building, Revan broke forward into a run, intentionally losing speed as they approached the front of the freighter’s cockpit and dropping over the edge.

The fingers of their left hand hooked into the hood of Vitiate’s cloak, pulling it down and then pulling Vitiate himself along with it, dragging the Sith Emperor into freefall with the large and extravagant target of the castle stairs placed directly below.

 _“Revan! What the kriff are you doing?”_ Mission’s startled and fearful voice broke in, _“Plan doesn’t mean JUMP OFF THE SHIP!”_

Revan twisted in the air, forcing Vitiate below them over the course of the descent and planting a bracing heel against the Emperor’s right shoulder blade. Vitiate swiftly countered, igniting and swinging his saber upward only to mount the resulting dodge with knee planted downward into Revan’s midsection.

“…Is this a bad time to ask if we ever picked up any more of those squad stims?”

Revan momentarily felt the impact with the sharp edges of several stone stairs, but that stopped mattering as soon as those stairs became a small crater with one battered and broken former Jedi and Sith Lord laid out in its center. Vitiate stood victorious, replacing the knee with a heavily-falling foot that only aggravated Revan’s injuries from the fall.

“It was a valiant effort, true,” the Emperor spoke condescendingly from above, still digging that heel into Revan’s midsection and forcing even more choked-down cries of pain through partially-collapsed lungs. “But in the end, you did what you always do. Something… unpredictable, yes, but also… incredibly stupid. It’s a shame your injuries are so great, as I would have liked to make you _watch_ , on the day when all life in this galaxy is purged to flow through me alone. As it stands, however… when my plan comes to pass, I don’t think I’ll bother remembering you at all.”

“…You know something, Vitiate?” Revan coughed, gasping for breath, activating a Mandalorian power shield in addition to the Force energies they were already pulling around themself as a defensive barrier. “If you’d just _followed me back out the door_ like I wanted, this all could’ve been over with a lot more quickly, but I guess this works too.”

Over the course of their six month journey to find the Star Maps and defeat Malak, Revan had, without entirely meaning to, acquired precisely _twenty_ antipersonnel ordinance mines, most of which ended up in a tightly-packed, single-file line on one particular elevated walkway leading directly away from the room Malak had chosen to be the site of their final confrontation.

In the three years since, Revan had _very intentionally_ bolstered the remaining number to a grand total of _four hundred and twenty-seven_ of the rather proven-effective proximity explosives. All but the odd seven had been put to use, along with, _finally_ , the full capabilities of the Baragwin Shadow Armor, between the hours of two and five in the morning that Revan had spent outfitting Vitiate’s castle stairs with enough of the damn things that the overlapping, dome-shaped effect indicators visible only through Revan’s interface visor collectively lit up the entire entryway like the center of a goddamn _sun_. Since the explosive devices in question had been salvaged from a number of distinct worlds, manufactured by at least sixteen different species, one could technically say that, only seconds later, the entire galaxy’s collective efforts played a part in _blowing Vitiate the fuck up_.

  


* * *

  


Mission followed the smoke, lowering the _Hawk_ deeper into the city until she could see exactly where a large section around the front door of the Emperor’s palace had been reduced to a crumbling mess of rubble, along with a significant portion of the street in front of it. She put the ship down directly across from the former entrance, already rising quickly from her seat as she pressed the control to lower the ramp.

She was slower than Jolee, Juhani, Canderous, and HK, finding the four of them already fanning out from the bottom of the ramp with the Force users to either side and the heavy gunners marching down center. With Zaalbar and T3 filing in behind to her right and left, Mission started forward behind the first wave, tystel at the ready.

As the smoke started to clear, she could faintly see a silhouette at the center of the devastation, upright and unmoving. A uneasy feeling filtered through her, a _crawling_ sensation unlike anything she’d felt even while facing down Malak’s Sith army.

Slowly, Vitiate turned, a gradual rotation whose eeriness was multiplied by the fact he was standing over an empty void of nothing, his legs performing no movement through the hanging, ragged tatters of his robes as he spun solidly in place.

In fact, his outer layer of robes had almost been blown or burned away as a whole, revealing an undersuit of light armor and more tightly-fitting clothing that had also been damaged significantly. His ornate shoulder panels had both broken to the point the longer base panels now more closely matched the size of the smaller, angled upper ones, his _feet_ were missing entirely – that probably explained the need for the floating – and as his turn completed, Mission could see the rage-filled, now-red-glowing glare of ghastly eyes shining out through a horribly burned and scarred visage.

Canderous and HK opened fire with their heavy repeaters, twin storms of blaster bolts converging on Vitiate’s position. The Emperor held his scorched hands out in front of him, and the incoming fire dispersed to small, dissipating clouds of white light only centimeters from his palms. In the midst of it all, Vitiate turned his head faintly to the right, and Jolee’s attempt to cast Force insanity was evidently reversed, the old man falling to the ground clutching his _own_ skull in a throw of madness. Likewise, another head-turn to the left caught Juhani frozen still in her own stasis field.

Mission fired away, adding several well-aimed but futile blaster bolts to Canderous and HK’s assault. T3’s rippers sounded from just beside her, the brave droid scooting ahead a half-meter at a time when his blaster fire failed to cause any damage either. Zaalbar roared fiercely, diverting right to curve around Canderous and charge forward along the perimeter of the others’ firing triangle.

“Big Z, wait!” Mission cried out, reaching helplessly as the Wookiee raised Bacca’s blade and Vitiate turned, a bolt of Force lightning striking Zaalbar’s chest. Fur singed, Zaalbar stumbled backward but remained standing, bellowing fiercely only for another bolt to strike him clear off his feet.

With a loud, scream-pitch whistle, T3 zoomed past a panicked Mission and toward the advancing frontline, retracting his blasters in favor of his flamethrower attachment. A column of fire struck the momentarily-distracted Vitiate, burning over the remains of his outer robes and prompting both a screaming writhe of pain and swift, focused retaliation.

The bolt of lightning carved down the center of the advance toward T3, but the droid was knocked away at the last moment by the fierce, bludgeon-like pendulum swing of a heavy repeater moving in from the left. The intervening HK-47 caught the strike in his right shoulder, the attack detonating in a burst of energy that shattered the assassin droid’s entire arm and at least a third of his upper torso into a shower of miniscule, metal shards.

Standing again with smoke rising from his fur, Zaalbar swung in a flurry of rapid strikes, and Vitiate soundly deflected them all with his lightsaber before catching the Wookiee in another, sustained bout of lightning that knocked the blade from his hand and cooked him where he stood.

The curved rectangle of the holographic targeting interface appeared over Mission’s leveled tystel.

_“Just DIE already!”_

The shot struck dead on target against the side of Vitiate’s burnt, bald head, leaving a round, searing burn even deeper than the other injuries. Enraged, and meeting Mission’s eyes with a lethal glare, the Sith Emperor casually lifted Zaalbar high in the air with the lightning still connected, then tossed his limp body behind and into the obscured, still-smoking crater of the palace stairs. Lightning gathered again in his left hand, and Mission felt her entire body scream.

She’d been struck by Force lightning before, but this sort of power was draining and searing like _fire_ in a way none of the other times could even compare to. It was also over far quicker than she’d expected, giving her an unexpected reprieve to gain her bearings, apply an advanced medpac, and notice that Canderous was now standing directly in front of her, sizzling steam rising from his heard, shoulders, and upper torso. It was impossible to tell how much damage was being done under his armor, but the Mandalorian refused to be stalled even by a continuous electrical assault, forging slowly but steadily ahead with his heavy repeater still firing.

_“THIS is what I LIVE for.”_

Then, the smoke of destruction cleared further, and another, struggling but determined silhouette appeared behind Vitiate. Revan was attempting to stand, jamming the familiar emergency red casing of a life support pack into their thigh as Force healing energies swirled around them.

Vitiate rounded just as the red and purple blades struck from above, the Emperor’s own saber held horizontal in a bracing defense. Revan used the downward blade-lock as a springboard to both force Vitiate closer to the solid ground of the remaining roadway and complete a somersaulting leap overhead, spinning in a whirl of blades to a readied landing between the _Ebon Hawk_ ’s crew and the wounded Sith tyrant.

Revan vertically spun their sabers once in their hands, then charged. Now recovered, however, Juhani and Jolee were closer, darting in from either side with Juhani closing first on account of her impressive, Force-assisted leap.

_“I will be your DOOM!”_

The heavy strike of a blue blade was enough to moderately buckle Vitiate’s block, and whatever retaliation the Emperor clearly had in store was halted by a swift horizontal sweep against his lower back, Jolee securing a direct hit to blue-purple sparking armor.

_“Never too old for THIS!”_

Just as Revan closed in, ready to add two more sabers to the fray, Vitiate rounded with shocking agility. The Emperor’s first, ninety-degree spin swung his lightsaber into a parry against Jolee’s next attack, his left hand thrust suddenly opposite and dealing Juhani a heavy Force push that sent the Cathar sprawling. The second spin was a full one-eighty, saber cutting across Revan’s blades to knock them off course while the same pushing hand now unleashed its telekinetic power against Jolee. On the third, two-seventy-ish spin, Vitiate brought a rounding, close-held, underhand Force push to bear in launching Revan directly backward.

As the three Force users struggled to recover, Vitiate held out both hands, having put away his saber in the midst of the last turn. A soft, yet sinister white light began to quickly build as drifting motes gathered to glowing spotlights around each upturned palm. All around them, the very air itself responded with a slow, upward movement of similar firefly-like lights that generated and disappeared in turn, forming a mesmerizing, rapidly-closing circle on the verge of reaching the edges of the gathered party.

Still stumbling, Revan cried out with defiant, desperate fury as they strained quickly to their feet, their movements pained and impossibly quick as their own palms struck forward to begin a Force shield that grew to encompass the entire group. Jolee and Juhani appeared to immediately pick up on the urgency, adding their own waning strength to reinforce the aura of guarding light.

Those deceptively innocuous-looking white lights were fluttering just outside the painstakingly-maintained shield, and they. Wanted. IN. Mission knew, fundamentally, that she wasn’t sensitive to the Force, but even she could feel _this_. The echoes of the reaching, waiting vice-grips in the air around her, buzzing with bared teeth and already latching onto her body like a thousand set-in hooks to momentarily pull her apart on the atomic level. She’d never heard of any such ability as Force _disintegration_ , but if she somehow survived the next several excruciating seconds, no one could ever convince her it wasn’t very, _very_ real.

She wanted to scream again, but the sound failed to resonate in her throat.

A clawed, fur-covered hand closed around Vitiate’s left wrist.

The Sith Emperor barely reacted, appearing even to faintly smirk as blue-white flames ignited over Zaalbar’s intervening fingers and crawled up his arm toward his elbow. The Wookiee cried out in pain as his forearm became engulfed in ethereal fire, but his squeal soon twisted to a snarling, scowling grimace of feral defiance.

Zaalbar planted his feet, bellowed a frightful roar, gripped harder around Vitiate’s wrist…

…and _pulled_.

The Sith Emperor’s blood was expectedly dark and viscous as it sprayed a small, quickly-weakening fountain from the empty stump of his shoulder.

Mission felt her heartbeat start again – she couldn’t remember when it stopped.

Immediately, Vitiate had an igniting lightsaber in his remaining hand, swinging fiercely across toward Zaalbar, but the Wookiee ducked low, reaching out with his left hand to lock another clawed hold on the Emperor’s right, footless ankle. The blue-white fire similarly consumed Zaalbar’s other forearm, but it failed to stop the spring and backward lunge that soundly deprived Vitiate of another limb.

The image that followed brought Mission’s mind back to sneaking around the upper levels of Taris, watching from afar as the super rich in their private pools played mock battle with long, brightly-colored, flexible tubes of synth-foam. _This_ version involved a lot less color, a lot more blood squirting out of the weapons when they hit, and on account of Zaalbar’s Wookiee strength despite the fire still burning up to his elbows, a lot more actual bones breaking on both sides of each impact.

The first five or six strikes in the flurry were rapid enough that the Emperor couldn’t counter, but before long, the red-bladed saber was in the air, held high for another wide sweep.

_“READY!”_

Charging in from the left on stuttered, sparking footsteps, a one-armed HK-47 swung that arm toward the ground, taking hold of Bacca’s blade in a shaky grip but nonetheless succeeding in parrying the attempted saber strike to farther behind Vitiate’s shoulder. Unskilled with melee weapons, the assassin droid lost his hold on the sword in the middle of the deflection, but used the free hand and the space made to round with a quick, devastating mechanical punch directly to Vitiate’s jaw.

Knocked backward into a double-limb swing from Zaalbar, Vitiate spun in place, exiting the turn with several fingers lifted off his saber and another lightning bolt sent out to strike HK in the chest. As the sparking droid flew and tumbled several meters away, the Emperor lifted his sole leg and kicked Zaalbar back in the opposite direction, turning his attention finally to the others just as Revan moved to close the distance.

A one-armed, one-legged Vitiate lurched forward in the air, saber ready to meet Revan’s blades, but Revan leapt to the right at the final moment, dodging into a spin.

As thunder struck in the distance, Mission saw the moment in the middle of the rounding twirl, when brightly glowing electrical energy built, seemingly from nowhere, at the bases of Revan’s saber blades. A familiar, blue-purple Force lightning traveled up the length of the right-hand-held red lightsaber, joined by a new, bright yellow, mirroring cackle along the left-held purple, both blades surging with energy as Revan prepared for the final attack.

Striking backward out of the spin, the purple blade drew protective sparks as it connected diagonally to Vitiate’s upper torso and cut only partially through the Sith Emperor’s back armor. The next moment, the nearly-parallel-swung red blade slammed into the purple from behind, sparks in four colors splintering from the impact as the added strength sunk both blades deeper into Vitiate’s body. Cutting slow, as if meeting incredible resistance, the pair of blades nonetheless completed the severing strike through Vitiate’s torso, finally melting through his chestplate and cutting him fully in half from right shoulder to left hip.

Vitiate screamed an ethereal, bellowing cry, a sudden, ghastly blue-white light shining from his formerly-red eyes and wide-opened mouth, as Revan’s sheer power in the Force took the life of a being that indeed, seemed to have not been entirely mortal. Just as quickly, the light vanished, and the two, smoking halves of most of Vitiate’s body tumbled, charred, to the pavement.

“ _That_ …”

Revan began, simply but with a note of stunned surprise, with their sabers now returned to normal and their interface visor coldly eyeing the lifeless remains of the once-immortal Emperor.

“…must have hurt.”

The drawn-out moment didn’t last long, as wandering eyes and shadowy echoes soon revealed that the party wasn’t alone with their fallen foe, and likely hadn’t been for some time. The bridges and balconies crisscrossing above were silhouetted with the outlines of _hundreds_ of Sith soldiers. Some were wearing the familiar tactical gear and holding blaster rifles, while others seemed clad in more ceremonial garb, wielding weapons like jagged polearms and curved staves.

Though exhaustion was fighting an intruding soreness, Mission readied her weapon, as the others still standing fought to do so as well. At this point, there was little they could do, and that reality would still take several moments longer to sink in.

A few, spared moments before it could, turbolaser fire rained down on the city from above, rapid-fired lime green energy bolts consuming the surrounding Sith forces in fiery explosions that caused massive structural damage and crumbled the city’s infrastructure. All eyes looked to the sky, perhaps still not entirely believing the sight of the Republic Hammerhead-class cruiser that had just broken the atmosphere.

_“Admiral Carth Onasi to the crew of the Ebon Hawk, repeat, Admiral Carth Onasi to the crew of the Ebon Hawk. I have your location, and fighters have been deployed to cover your exit. Relay back if you require ground extraction.”_

“We’ve got it covered, Carth,” Revan assured, a finger held to their comm, then turned to address the others. “Everyone, back to the ship!”

Canderous scooped up a sparking and nonsense-speaking HK, whose internal repair systems were already kicking in, and Juhani and Jolee stayed to the sides of the retreat, deflecting the few stray blaster bolts that made it through the chaos of the aerial bombardment. The Hammerhead’s contingent of Aurek-class tactical strikefighters strafed overhead, weaving through the buildings as the Crew filtered back into the _Ebon Hawk_ and the ramp pulled closed.

With both Zaalbar and Canderous out of commission, T3 rolled in to copilot, interfacing with the divider console as Mission lifted off. Before long, the sounds of turbolaser fire and distant lightning strikes were muffled by the walls of the Hammerhead’s hangar, the fighters entering the bay as well before the cruiser hurried off into hyperspace.

Mission sighed in the momentary calm, still shaken as Revan entered the cockpit. “I never would’ve thought you’d plan this with _Carth_.”

Revan stared straight ahead, out the wide front window, to where stretcher-bearing medical teams were already rushing between the rows of fighter craft and approaching the _Hawk_.

“…That’s because I _didn’t_.”

  


* * *

  


Mission curled up on the medical bed in the empty room, pulling her knees into her chest and shivering. Fully healed as she was, all those Force attacks wracking her body had still left a general stinging sensation to linger, painful enough for her to feel the urge to scream but dull enough that she didn’t actually need to.

It was rough, but with every new bout of Force healing that drifted through the area, the pain noticeably diminished, to Mission’s increasing relief.

Sometimes, she really missed back when she had… well, a whole bunch of _friends_ for a crew instead of people bound to smother and obsessively worry over her. Like now, when the idea of being touched or talking to anyone was just nauseating, and all she really wanted to do was lie here and _breathe_ until she felt better.

The intensity with which she was thinking that thought was probably enough to deter the Force-sensitives, Zaalbar and Canderous would still be dealing with their own, more serious injuries, and HK was still recharging and waiting for repair as far as she knew, so that left…

Mission almost groaned at the buzzing in her ears as T3-M4 rolled into the room, tilting his head to look worriedly up at the distressed Twi’lek.

“If you wanna visit, just… keep quiet, okay?” Mission pleaded in what, right now, was probably a whisper to anyone but her.

T3 slowly nodded his head, then went completely still, evidently planning on staying that way indefinitely.

That… was tolerable.

  


* * *

  


“ _Admiral_ Carth Onasi,” Revan greeted, sitting up as the stoic-statured, orange-jacketed Republic commander finally made an appearance through the open door.

“You should get some more rest,” Carth spoke with the intruding edge of worry. “That was quite the stunt you pulled.”

“Fortunately for me _and_ you, your medics are actually competent,” Revan countered with a combatively arched eyebrow. “But I _did_ have it handled.”

“You fell off a spaceship, Revan!” and ah, _there_ was that classic Carth Onasi exasperation.

“It was in low atmosphere.”

“You… _gah_ , I really can’t believe you sometimes.” Carth clutched the sides of his head in defeat, then shook it before meeting Revan’s gaze. He was quiet for a moment, then ever-so-slightly moved his eyes out of alignment. “How… _is_ everyone?”

“…We’ve been better, but thanks for asking.”

“I _mean_ …” Carth emphasized, trailing off again with another frustrated sigh. “Not counting today, just… since before.”

“You can talk to them yourself, you know,” Revan lightly scolded, then paused. “The one’s who’ll _let_ you, at least. Beyond that, I suppose you could still _try_.”

“What are you…” Carth was only confused for a fraction of a second, then balked in disbelief. “It’s been _three years_ , Revan! Are you telling me she’s still—”

Revan dropped the mask of humor and sighed heavily, settling the room into a brief silence as Carth stared on with something torn between guilt and frustration.

“…What was I supposed to do then?” Carth asked, focused eyes piercing directly toward Revan’s with a sort of scolding, _waiting_ look for whatever the answer might be.

“I don’t think you made the wrong choice, Carth,” Revan countered solemnly. “How Mission reacted to your decision is not your responsibility, nor is it in your power to change. She’ll come to terms with it on her own, one day.”

Carth looked away. “I… I _do_ still feel guilty, I just… thought she’d understand.”

“She _does_ understand, Carth. She understands you were never going to be a permanent part of her life, and she’s going to do all she can to keep herself from reigniting that hope, and getting hurt all over again. I’m not saying it’s healthy or sustainable, but it’s how she’s chosen to process those emotions, and there’s nothing either of us can say to her now that she doesn’t already know.”

Carth sighed yet again. “Then I’m just… glad she’s okay. That you all are.”

Revan eyed the admiral with curiosity. “How _did_ you manage to find us, anyway? Dromund Kaas happens to be _a bit out of the way_.”

“It was… a vision,” Carth began, looking suddenly sheepish. “Over… your force bond.”

“Ah, yes… _that_ ,” Revan acknowledged with a nod and a smirk tinged with slight annoyance, eyes drifting over Carth’s shoulder and out into the hall. “I assume she’s standing awkwardly, just outside the door?”

“You could have _at least_ involved the council, Revan,” Bastila Shan scolded sternly, back rigidly straight and hands clasped behind her back as she rounded the door frame. “Even _you_ should have seen the wisdom in informing us of a threat of this scale.”

“Assuming they’d believe me,” Revan combated lightly.

The tension in the room then seemed to drop over the next several seconds, to Bastila’s apparent confusion and Carth’s clear relief.

“Either way, I have a few things to say to you,” Revan began again, “and you might actually be surprised, that it’s not the worst thing in the world to see you again.”

The awkward fumbling returned to Bastila’s expression, eyes averting. “It’s good to see that you’re alright. I feared the worst, but I knew in the Force that you’d return in one piece.”

“Of course you did.” Revan sighed, but stood from the edge of the bed, catching Bastila’s eyes again with the motion. “I know our history isn’t something I can forgive so easily, but over time, I’ve long realized I owe you my thanks, especially given what I now know is the truth.”

“…And what truth is that?”

“That I never fell to the dark side, not of my own accord," Revan began in reply. "Malak and I… _dabbled_ in the power it offered, when necessary to achieve our goals, but after the Mandalorian wars… it was _Vitiate_ we sought as our final adversary, the mastermind behind it all. He captured us, and turned us both into his dark acolytes… to be later freed by the energies of the Star Forge, but left in the darkness nonetheless. Your… _intervention_ may have only traded one fall for another, as far as I’m concerned, but it saved me from a far worse fate, and gave me the footing to find myself again. For that much, you do have my gratitude.”

Bastila nodded, processing the revelation with notes of both guilt and surprise. “I don’t feel as though I deserve your thanks, but I suppose it’s fortunate events played out as they did.”

She was oddly quiet for another long moment, deep in consideration.

“You should know, I… I felt it in our bond, that though you would prove victorious in the battle, this would be the last time we are to see one another. Yet…”

Her face screwed up over a particular note of confusion.

“…yet I also sense that the _character_ of this parting of ways is not one to be feared. I do not believe an ill fate awaits either of us, simply that we are not fated to continue down the path we began. Under these circumstances, there is…”

Guilt returned as much as it could on the mostly-stoic face of a Jedi.

“…something I should have returned to you a long time ago.”

Bastila’s hands unfolded from behind her back, presenting the object she’d been holding just out of sight and…

_Oh._

Revan stared into the narrow-faced mask of Mandalorian beskar, the thin line of the visor and the red markings on dark plating. The room felt heavy and the mask in their hands was light like air.

“I never even knew why I kept it,” Bastila began again with slight hesitance. “At the time, I thought it a symbol tainted by darkness, but I now believe that was never its ultimate fate. With as much as it likely means to you, I… suppose I should never have kept it from you this long.”

“No need to apologize,” Revan assured. “Actually... this sort of makes us even.”

Bastila met Revan’s eyes again with a surprised, curious look. “How so?”

Setting aside the mask, Revan placed a small, complex, metallic cube in Bastila’s hands, displaying a long-lingering guilt of their own.

Bastila eyed the object, then looked up again, brows furrowing in confusion. “A holocron?”

“Found it in the back of a Krayt dragon cave. You were gone by then… and after that, there was just never a good time. You’ll understand when you open it.” Revan began to turn away, but didn’t let their regretful withdrawal linger, meeting Bastila’s eyes again with knowing poignance. “Try to at least have Carth around when you do, I’m afraid the _Jedi_ aren’t going to be much help.”

Bastila looked back with narrowed, slightly skeptical eyes, but nodded.

In the growing stretch of quiet, Carth stepped away from the wall. “We should let you get some rest now. You can stay on board as long as you need to recover, but we still have our other assignments to get to.”

“At ease, Admiral,” Revan nodded with a smirk, “and good luck.”

Carth left the room, and Bastila only lingered a moment before re-clasping her hands for a parting bow and turning to leave.

“One last favor, if you don’t mind,” Revan called out, making Bastila pause.

The Jedi sentinel turned back around, eyes meeting Revan’s with a long silence, a slight look of worry, but mostly the echo of a soft, tentative smile. “What can I do?”

Revan returned an awaited look of resigned sympathy, but smiled as well, a flicker of hope or at least having _tried_ falling soft in the gentle, yet impassioned command that followed.

“...Do something nice for yourself every once in a while.”

  


* * *

  


A week later, Zaalbar was getting used to wearing shield units over his forearms until his fur grew back, HK was pointedly ignoring T3’s snide comments and practicing with all the concealed, deadly weaponry Revan had worked into his rebuilt arm, Canderous had looked entirely fine for about six and a half days, Jolee was cranky as ever, Mission had resorted to using her stealth field to avoid surprise hugs from Juhani, and the _Ebon Hawk_ was in the Hammerhead’s hangar, ready to depart for more absolutely-non-Republic-sanctioned adventures.

“So…” Mission began like a quiet whistle, distantly conflicted but decidedly grateful eyes staring across the table to where the returned mask rested beneath Revan’s pondering gaze. “You gonna try it on?”

“…Not yet,” Revan answered, looking up to meet Mission’s steely glare of shock.

“What? Why not? I mean _maybe_ we talk about it with the crew first if that’ll help, but—”

“It’s not that,” said Revan, pointedly waiting for Mission to calm down before tilting the thin line of their visor to give the mask on the table another glance. “The mask is… _important_ , yes, but… not in the way you’re thinking, at least not anymore. At… _some_ point it might, quite possibly, have been exactly that, but among _other_ reasons, and eventually, it would have only been those other reasons that were left.”

“Soo… you don’t need it? What’s the visor for, then?”

Revan looked up again, still in thought, as if debating the answer for themself. “It’s a part of me, and I know I’ll wear it again eventually, but the thing is… I can’t even remember what those other reasons _were_. I look at this, and I still don’t fully understand it; what it meant to me in the past, and what it means for my future.”

After a long pause, and a worried look from Mission, Revan sighed.

“I’m _Okay_ , Mission. I have been for a long time,” Revan began, then stopped with only a slight correction. “I mean, obviously piecing together my visions and knowing about Vitiate for over a year was _distressing_ , but in the sense you’re concerned about… all the questions that remain for me have to do with my powers in the Force, and what Revan meant as a _symbol_.”

Mission took a settling breath. “As long as you’re sure… wait, how _did_ you do that thing with the lightning on your sabers, anyway?”

Revan pulled their hands up from the table, glancing questioningly into their open palms for a long, silent moment. “Yet another mystery that evades me.”

Mission let the moment pass, sitting back in her chair and taking a sip from her steaming mug of kaf as she pulled the blanket back around her. The lights were low in the common area, the rail-mounted, modular seating was pulled up against the central holo-table, and their stay on Carth’s Hammerhead was scheduled to end early the next morning.

“So where to next?” the Twi’lek asked, keeping balance while shrugging her shoulders. “Now that we’ve saved the galaxy again, got anywhere particular in mind?”

Revan thought for a while, until one particular idea seemed to cement itself. “There _was_ one lead I wanted to check up on,” they said, pulling out a datapad and turning it over in their hands.

Mission eyed the device with blank curiosity. “…And what’s on _that_ one?” 

“While I was sneaking in through the palace grounds, I happened across the remains of some fool who’d tried to get past the perimeter guards and kill one of the senators. Tell me, do you remember that bounty hunter group I was invited to join?”

 _The Genoharadan_. Mission nodded.

“Well, those three contracts I was supposed to complete?” Revan arched an eyebrow. “It turns out they were actually the organization’s other three leaders, and Hulas was just trying to get me to do his dirty work.”

“So… you’re gonna have a _word_ with him?” Mission guessed.

“Assuming he’s even still standing there, you’d think he’d eventually get tired,” Revan chided with a fierce grin. “But he certainly has some explaining to do. On the other hand, though… we _would_ have to go back to _Manaan_.”

Mission chuckled, where years ago she might have groaned. “ _Eh_ , if nothing else, we could use some more coasters,” she said with a faint shrug, as she set down her mug of kaf on one of the various datapad copies of the Manaan visitor’s guide strewn about the ring-edge of the holotable.

“…I suppose there’s always _that_.”

  


* * *

  


**Seventeen Hours Later – Hyperspace, En Route to Manaan**

“On final approach now,” Mission announced, tapping at the controls to prepare the exit to realspace. Zaalbar checked his own display and looked back over the divider with a reassuring nod.

“Now, remember, let’s take this one in stride,” Revan reminded the pilots – and Canderous, who’d taken one of the backup stations for Navigation. “Just another, non-out-of-the-ordinary, pleasure visit to… _Manaan_ … just, try to sell it as best you can, alright? Don’t want to be suspicious here, nor is there any reason to rush into _another_ high-stakes adventure after everything we just—”

“What… _is_ that?”

Mission was squinting at the front window, still trying to find some way to explain why one of the bright lights up ahead was just… standing still, instead of zooming past the ship like all the others. In another moment, the light extended out horizontally in either direction, forming a bright, white line directly across the hyperspace lane.

Canderous leant urgently to the edge of his seat for a better look, seeming startled but just as confused as Mission. “Whatever it is, it even _being there_ doesn’t look good!”

The anomaly expanded in the vertical direction, opening into a hollow, white-bordered rectangle with only a dark void of pitch black visible beyond. More white light swirled around from the top and bottom, connecting to form a wide circle set into the rectangle’s center. The rest of the space between the shapes soon filled up with an arrangement of glyph-like symbols, small squares and diamonds tessellating around the circle’s outer edge.

It was getting _closer_ , or… getting bigger, it was hard to tell when the anomaly didn’t actually seem to be moving relative to anything around it, just opening up specifically in front of the _Ebon Hawk_ with the apparent intent to swallow it whole.

“Can we avoid it?” Revan asked, already suspecting the answer. It was in _hyperspace_ , and the only way to not to hit it would be to drop out ahead of it. Hoping it wasn’t too late, Mission punched hard at the controls, to no avail.

“The _Hawk_ isn’t responding!” she shouted, looking with wide eyes back up to the series of shapes now on the verge of surrounding the entire ship.

All at once, the blue-white glow of hyperspace vanished, but the darkness that surrounded them wasn’t the lightless void it had first appeared to be. Below the _Ebon Hawk_ – whose uncontrolled flight through the anomaly’s interior was set at the pace of little more than a pleasant, sightseeing stroll – Mission could make out what looked to be small roadways or walking paths wound throughout the space on multiple levels, bordered only by thin white outlines and forming a connecting network between more gateways of different sizes and shapes.

She only had seconds to take it all in, as before she could even fully process the fact the ship was being guided by some exterior manipulation, another gateway like the first opened immediately in their path, the anomaly giving way to the star-spotted blackness of open space beyond.

Mission blinked, checking her controls again and finding no resistance, nor any evidence of the anomaly on the external sensors.

“What happened?” Revan asked, a note of suspicion growing in their bewildered voice.

Staring ahead into an unremarkable view of space and a field of stars ahead, Mission couldn’t help but settle her breathing, and let a strange sense of calm and relief join her pointed confusion.

“Did… _anything_ happen?”

  


* * *

  


“…The bond is broken.”

“What?”

Carth looked up from his datapad with alarm, and turned immediately to where Bastila sat in meditation, staring out the large window into the vastness of space. “Are they… okay? Did something happen?”

“Yes… No, I…” Bastila attempted to assure, but shook her head at the questions and paused for a moment of thought. “If Revan had become one with the Force, I would have felt it. No, this… this is something very different, and perhaps entirely new.”

She cast her eyes back up to the stars, searching for answers that she didn’t seem to find.

“Wherever they have gone… it seems even the Force itself cannot yet reach them.”

**Author's Note:**

> Places. It goes... places.


End file.
